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2025-08-20 21:30:37

Want backlinks from Forbes, HubSpot, or Insider? Without paying a cent?

Journalist outreach is how you do it.

And in 2025, it’s still one of the most effective ways to earn authority links that actually move the needle.

We also run Traffic Think Tank, and we used this tactic to 10x visibility and revenue in the past year.

And built our authority in the increasingly important AI / LLM ecosystem:

This guide was created with insights from the team at Jolly SEO — the pros behind thousands of earned media wins.

Plus, we’re including our free Journalist Outreach Toolkit to help you implement everything immediately.

In this post, you’ll learn how to:

• Manage the overwhelming flow of media requests
• Write pitches journalists actually use
• Earn backlinks that boost rankings and trust
• Track ROI and prove value to stakeholders

Let’s break it down.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

If you don’t know what success looks like, you’ll waste time chasing the wrong wins.

Before you write a single pitch, get clear on what your business needs from journalist outreach.

Are you after stronger SEO performance? Brand visibility? Long-term relationships with the media?

Your goals will shape everything — from the platforms you prioritize to how you evaluate results.

For instance, let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS marketer trying to rank a key feature page.

Look for HARO or Qwoted queries where the topic aligns with the problem your product solves.

If you can offer a helpful, relevant perspective — one that happens to mention your company or approach — that’s a win. Even if the link doesn’t show up right away.

The bottom line?
When you know what wins you’re aiming for, you’re far more likely to hit them.

Greg Heilers, co-founder of Jolly SEO, puts it simply:

“Depending on your criteria, writing skill, and site/figurehead optimization, you can achieve a win as frequently as 1 in every 3 pitches.”

Step 2: Establish Realistic Expectations (This Will Save Your Sanity)

Most people give up on journalist outreach too soon.

Not because the tactic doesn’t work — but because their expectations are wildly off.

They expect quick wins, a high response rate, and instant SEO impact.

The reality is slower, less glamorous, and a lot more sustainable if you approach it with the right mindset.

Typical Success Rates (and What to Expect Over Time)

Even top-tier media outreach experts don’t land every pitch.

For beginners, a 3–5% response rate is normal. As you gain experience, that can climb to 8–12%, and with refined systems and strong positioning, 15–20% is achievable.

That means you might need to send 10–30 pitches just to earn one mention.

This isn’t failure — it’s the math behind consistent results.

So, what does that actually look like over time?

• Month 1: You’re learning the workflow. Scanning opportunities, testing your messaging, and getting familiar with the process. Landing even one or two mentions is a meaningful start.
• Month 3: You start to see patterns. Which types of queries are worth your time. Which angles tend to get picked up. You might even get quoted by the same journalist twice.
• Month 6: You have momentum. Pitches get easier. You might even start getting inbound requests from writers who’ve seen your previous contributions.

The payoff builds slowly — but it compounds.

Beyond the byline: Search is evolving fast. Journalist quotes are now surfacing in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If you’re featured in a top-tier article, there’s a real chance your name, company, or insight will show up in AI-generated answers.

Why Most Pitches Fail (And It’s Not Your Fault)

The biggest myth in journalist outreach is that great writing is enough.

Spoiler: It’s not.

Journalists get dozens — sometimes hundreds — of pitches for a single request.

Many already have sources in mind.

Others are on tight deadlines and go with the first relevant response they see. If your pitch arrives an hour late, it might not get opened at all.

This doesn’t mean your pitch was bad. It means timing and fit beat polish more often than not.

Step 3: Set Up Your Inbox and Tracking

The fastest way to burn out in journalist outreach?

Drowning in irrelevant pitches, deadlines you’ll never meet, and inbox chaos.

Here’s the good news: A few quick workflows can save you hours a week and help you stay consistent over time.

Make Your Emails Credible at a Glance

Journalists scan dozens of emails a day, and first impressions matter.

A polished inbox setup instantly signals trust and professionalism.

Include:

• Branded email address: Avoid generic Gmail accounts when possible. Use a domain-linked email to show legitimacy.
• Uploaded headshot: Many platforms now require it
• Branded signature: Add your name, title, company, LinkedIn, and a link to your website. Make it easy for journalists to verify who you are.
  

  

You don’t need a huge platform. You just need to look like someone worth quoting.

Build a Simple Filtering System

Start by organizing your inbox to reduce the cognitive load.

Create folders or labels by platform (e.g., “HARO Outreach”), and add filters to automatically route incoming queries.

Then, block off 15-minute review windows, no more than three times a day.

You don’t need to monitor your inbox all day — just be consistent.

Use the “5-second scan” rule: if it’s not clearly relevant within a few seconds, archive and move on.

Use Fast, Practical Qualification Criteria

Not every opportunity is worth your time — and trying to pitch everything will tank your efficiency.

For each request, ask:

• Is this in my area of expertise? If not, don’t force a fit. Weak relevance leads to ignored pitches.
• Do I meet the specific requirements? Many queries ask for certain job titles or credentials. Skip it if you’re not eligible.
• Is the deadline realistic? If you can’t hit the cutoff, don’t let it clog your pipeline.
• Is the publication worth your time? Not every outlet will align with your goals. Use your win criteria (from Step 1) to filter.

For instance, if you’re a freelance content strategist, a request asking for insights from “Fortune 500 CEOs” is a clear pass.

Save your effort for a request that matches your actual experience.

Step 4: Choose Your Platforms Strategically

Not all journalist outreach platforms are created equal.

Some are great for quick wins. Others shine when you’re targeting high-authority publications or niche audiences.

The key isn’t choosing the platform with the most opportunities — it’s choosing the one that aligns with your actual goals.

That means considering more than just volume.

You’ll want to look at average link quality, pitch-to-publication turnaround, cost, and whether the requests match your expertise.

Don’t feel like you need to master every platform out of the gate.

Start with one or two that align with your goals, get really good at using them, and expand once your workflow is dialed in.

How to Choose the Right Platform (Fast)

Not sure where to start? Think of this as your cheat sheet for getting started.

• Just getting your reps in? Start with Featured — it’s simple, fast, and great for building confidence early.
• Need high-authority links that actually move rankings? Go with Qwoted — it consistently surfaces high domain rating (DR) opportunities from recognizable media outlets.
• Want placements in premium, name-brand publications? Choose ProfNet — fewer opportunities, but often higher caliber if you have the budget.
• Targeting marketers, founders, or SaaS buyers? Help a B2B Writer delivers curated, niche-relevant requests in your exact lane.
• Need a high volume of relevant opportunities to work with? Source of Sources gives you a steady stream of niche pitches — just be ready to filter.
• Looking for general-topic visibility at scale? HARO still delivers breadth and quantity — just expect to dig for quality.

Looking for country-specific platforms?

Many regions have their own journalist request tools worth exploring. For example, SourceBottle is widely used in Australia, and ResponseSource is popular among PR pros and journalists in the U.K.

Just try a quick Google search like “journalist request platform [your country].”

You’ll usually uncover a few local options — no massive directory needed.

Step 5: Write Pitches That Win (Without Taking Forever)

The best pitches don’t win because they’re long or clever.

They win because they’re skimmable, useful, and immediately quotable.

Your job isn’t to impress the journalist — it’s to make their job easier.

Establish Credibility in 8 Words or Less

Start with a strong subject line. Greg emphasizes combining relevance with instant credibility.

Use this structure:

Examples:

• SaaS CEO’s Take on Fixing Churn
• SEO Consultant’s Local Link Playbook
• Copywriter’s Formula for High-Converting Headlines

Then, build your pitch. It should look something like this:

Pro tip: AI tools can help you brainstorm angles — but the final quotes should sound human, specific, and ready to publish. Use AI for speed, not substitution.

Make Your Quotes Instantly Usable

Journalists aren’t grading your writing.

They’re looking for clean, usable quotes they can drop straight into a draft.

As Greg puts it:

“Journalists want quotes they can immediately copy and paste into their articles, no changes needed.”

Here’s how to make that happen:

Pro tip: For the full checklist — and why each step matters — use the Pitch Checklist tab in our journalist outreach toolkit.

Not all pitches are created equal.

Here’s what gets picked up — and what gets ignored.

❌ Bloated, vague, and completely unusable:

✅Clear, specific, and quote-ready:

Pitch Faster Without Losing Quality

Greg recommends prewriting as much as possible so you’re never starting your press outreach from scratch.

Have 3–4 versions of your bio ready to go, tailored for different beats (e.g., SaaS, marketing, AI).

Build a few quote templates for your most common talking points. And give yourself a hard limit: Aim to finish each pitch in 10 minutes or less.

The more reps you get, the easier this becomes.

Don’t forget your first line does heavy lifting. It shows up in inbox previews and often determines whether your pitch even gets opened. Make it count.

Caveat: Structure helps, but sameness kills. AI tools and mass pitching have flooded inboxes with lookalike answers. Don’t just fill in a template — say something only you would say. That’s what gets quoted.

Yes, You’re Qualified. Here’s Why.

One of the biggest blockers in journalist outreach? Thinking you’re not “qualified” to respond.

But here’s the truth: You don’t need a blue checkmark or a book deal to be helpful.

If you can help readers understand something better or offer a useful perspective, you’re already ahead.

Credibility doesn’t mean status. It means relevance.

That could be your job title, your years of experience, a client result, or just a smart way of framing the problem.

When in doubt, try this five-part framework to surface story ideas from your own work:

• The situation: What were you working on?
• The challenge: What made it tricky?
• Your approach: What did you try or test?
• The result: What changed? What worked?
• The insight: What do you wish you’d known earlier?

The bottom line?

If you’ve solved what they’re writing about, you belong in their inbox.

Step 6: Master the Follow-Up (Without Being Annoying)

It’s tempting to send a pitch and move on.

But following up is one of the easiest ways to multiply the value of your efforts.

It’s low-effort, high-return, and totally underused.

The key is to keep it respectful, useful, and brief. Here’s how to do it without sounding pushy.

Turn Mentions Into Links

Let’s say you’ve been quoted but not linked.

Here’s a simple, polite ask that turns visibility into real SEO value:

Turn Replies Into Relationships

The journalists who quote you today could become recurring collaborators — if you give them a reason to remember you.

Done right, a follow-up turns one good pitch into long-term visibility, stronger links, and a journalist who might actually remember your name.

Step 7: Find Hidden Wins (Most People Miss These)

You might already be getting results — and not even know it.

At Jolly SEO, Greg sees it constantly.

“People message me and say, ‘I’ve sent dozens of pitches, but I can’t get any wins. What am I doing wrong?’

My first question is always: ‘Have you tried looking for them yet?’”

The good news?

You don’t need expensive tools or a manual content audit. A few smart searches and a weekly routine are all it takes.

Use Google Search Operators

Advanced search syntax lets you find live mentions with precision. Run these searches weekly to uncover wins:

• “Your Name” + “Your Brand Name”
• “CEO of [Brand]” site:targetpublication.com
• “[Your unique quote]” site:[domain]

Use quotes to force exact matches and ”site:” to limit the search to specific outlets.

Set Up Google Alerts

Track new mentions passively by creating alerts for:

• Your name + company
• Your job title (e.g., “CMO of Backlinko”)
• Distinctive quotes or phrasing you tend to use

This won’t catch everything, but it will help surface a steady stream of new wins.

Manual Checking Schedule

Most people stop after they hit “send.”

But Greg estimates you’ll never be told about 90% of your wins.

So if you don’t go looking, you’ll never even know they happened.

Build a simple check-in routine:

• Weekly: Run your branded Google searches
• Monthly: Review recent articles from journalists you’ve pitched
• Quarterly: Use SEO tools (like Ahrefs or Semrush) to spot backlinks or citations

Pro tip: Use the Win Finder (in the toolkit) to uncover hidden mentions.

Step 8: Build Your Journalist Network

Every pitch is more than a one-time shot at a link — it’s the start of a potential relationship.

If a journalist quotes you once, there’s a good chance they’ll want insights from you again.

But only if you make it easy, relevant, and respectful to stay in touch.

Track Relationships Like You Track Links

Use a simple CRM (even a spreadsheet works) to track journalist contacts the same way you’d track sales prospects:

• Name + outlet
• Contact info + beat
• History (quoted, linked, mentioned)
• Relationship stage (cold, warm, repeat, advocate)
• Last contact date + next follow-up

If you’ve contributed to multiple stories or gotten links from the same writer, mark them as high-priority for future outreach. These are your warmest leads.

Build Trust Without Pitching

You don’t need a quote request to stay visible.

In fact, the best relationship-building moments often happen when you’re not asking for anything.

Promote their articles on social with a thoughtful comment — not just a tag. If you come across a story angle or source that fits their beat, send it their way.

If they mentioned a topic they’re covering next month, follow up. Even better: introduce them to another trusted source in your network.

These small, useful gestures build familiarity over time.

That’s how you become more than a random inbox name. You move from pitching to being pitched.

Pro tip: Use our Outreach CRM Tracker (in the toolkit) to start tracking pitches and wins instantly.

Step 9: Measure and Prove ROI

If you’re investing time, you need to show what it’s worth — to your team, your stakeholders, or your clients.

That means going beyond raw link counts and telling the full story of impact.

Track What Matters

Link counts are a starting point, but they’re not the whole picture.

Look at which platforms consistently deliver wins, how many hours go into each link, and which journalists become repeat collaborators.

Track your mentions, even when there’s no link.

Watch for traffic spikes after a story goes live, and pay attention to whether rankings improve on pages earning coverage.

For example, if a single article mention leads to a 12% lift in branded search and earns a backlink to your pricing page, that’s clear momentum.

When you combine reach, effort, and outcome, you start to see the full return.

Use a Simple ROI Framework

When you need to quantify results for stakeholders, use this basic formula to translate time and effort into value:

For example:

You earned five links in a month — all from DR 70+ publications.

Let’s say the average market cost for that caliber of link is $800, and you assign a DR adjustment factor of 1 (used to reflect link quality; 1.0 = solid, relevant fit):

Link value: $800 (avg. link cost) x 5 links = $4,000

Time investment: 12 hours × $100/hr = $1,200

ROI: ($4,000 – $1,200) / $1,200 × 100 = 233%

Now compare that to sponsored content, digital PR retainers, or even PPC — and suddenly, this starts looking like a serious channel.

Build a Stakeholder-Ready Report

The final piece is packaging your results in a way that stakeholders understand and care about.

Keep it simple, visual, and focused on outcomes:

• A summary of links earned by domain authority range
• Growth in brand mentions across media and social
• Traffic lift or ranking movement tied to earned placements
• Estimated link value compared to paid alternatives
• A standout example or case study from that month

When stakeholders can see the momentum — not just the metrics — they’re far more likely to stay bought in.

Start Earning Links That Actually Matter

You’ve got everything you need to get started. Now, it’s time to make your move.

Write a pitch today. Just one.

Don’t overthink it.

Grab the Journalist Outreach Toolkit, find a real query, and put your perspective to work.

Then, send it — and give yourself a shot at a win most people never even try for.

The post Journalist Outreach: How to Earn High-Authority Links in 9 Steps appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-18 22:02:29

More of your customers are using AI to research products before they buy. Are you prepared?

To put this into perspective:

Last year, you might’ve searched “best bed sheets” on Google and scrolled through a few links or a Shopping ad.

This year, you’re asking ChatGPT:

“I sleep hot and have sensitive skin. Can you recommend some breathable bed sheets that won’t irritate me?”

Totally different input. Totally different rules for showing up.

AI Search still cares about the fundamentals — content, crawlability, internal links, and high-quality backlinks. But now, your visibility is influenced by more than just your website.

AI models reflect the full picture:

• What people say about your brand
• Where you’re mentioned
• How your product is reviewed

It’s not just keyword targeting — it’s relevance engineering.

Shoutout to Mike King @ iPullRank for coining this term.

That’s where AI Search Optimization comes in.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Make your product pages visible and understandable to LLMs
• Structure your data with schema and product feeds
• Submit your catalog to AI search platforms
• Shift from keyword targeting to prompts and personas
• Build an AI-friendly brand presence across the web
• Track your visibility in a probabilistic, answer-first world

The future of ecommerce search isn’t about rankings. It’s about being part of the answer. This guide will show you how.

Step 1: Make Your PDPs Crawlable and Renderable

Before you do anything, start here: can bots actually see your product content?

When people started taking AI tools and chatbots seriously in 2022/23, some site owners turned to blocking their crawlers from accessing their site.

But if you block the crawler, it won’t be able to serve your pages in its responses.

Don’t Block AI Crawlers in Your Robots.txt File

Unless you actively took the step to block them, you shouldn’t need to do anything here. But it’s still worth verifying there are no lines in your robots.txt file like:

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Don’t Serve Important Content Using JavaScript

The other aspect of crawlability to consider is how you’re serving your content.

Because right now, bots from the likes of ChatGPT and Perplexity do not appear to process JavaScript (although Google’s Gemini can). If your content is being loaded dynamically, they’re likely missing it completely.

That includes:

• Product descriptions
• Pricing
• Images
• Schema markup

If it’s not in the raw HTML, LLMs like these can’t see it. And if they can’t see it, you won’t show up in AI-generated product recommendations.

To make sure you’re not causing crawling issues here, you first need to understand how your ecommerce platform handles JavaScript. Every platform is different:

• Shopify: Generally fine, but watch out for third-party apps injecting schema or content via JS.
• WooCommerce: Depends heavily on your theme. Many use plugins that load parts of the page with JS.
• Custom stacks: If you’re using React, Vue, or similar frameworks, check whether product pages render server-side or after load.

Next, check your PDPs manually. You can do this by right-clicking and selecting “Inspect” in your browser.

Then press Command+Shift+P on Mac, or Control+Shift+P on Windows/Linux.

In the Command Menu, start typing “javascript” and then select “Disable JavaScript”:

Reload the page, and you’ll see how it looks without JavaScript enabled — in other words, how LLMs like ChatGPT see the page:

In the Nike example above, the LLM would still see key info like the product title, description, and price.

But in the example below…

…it would see nothing.

You can see on the right that there’s still page code loading. But nothing is actually displayed to the user with JavaScript disabled. Meaning AI tools wouldn’t be able to pull any info from this page.

If you are using apps or components that rely on JavaScript to display key content, talk to your dev team about server-side rendering (SSR) or prerendering. The goal is to ensure all critical product info is delivered in the first HTML response.

Further reading: What Is JavaScript SEO? 6 Best Practices to Boost Rankings

Step 2: Add Structured Schema Markup

Once your product pages are crawlable, the next step is making them understandable.

Structured data — specifically Schema.org markup in JSON-LD format — helps systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google understand what your product is, how much it costs, whether it’s in stock, and more.

In the world of SEO, we’ve long used schema markup to improve how our pages appear in traditional search results.

Here’s an example of a traditional Google results enhanced with schema markup, appearing as a rich snippets:

But for LLM visibility, schema helps the AI tools understand key details about your products. Which makes it easier for them to pull in your products when they’re making recommendations for users.

How do we know this?

Because Microsoft has told us. The tech giant, a major investor in OpenAI (behind ChatGPT), said:

“[Structured data] makes it easier for search engines not only to index your content, but to surface it accurately and richly in search results, shopping experiences, and AI-driven assistants.”

(Interestingly, Microsoft/Bing recommends combining this with IndexNow — a service that automatically pings search engines when you update your content.)

Plus, using structured data just makes sense — it helps make it easier for complex machines to understand our content. Whether that’s a search engine or an LLM, providing more context is generally always going to be a good idea.

Here’s how to use structured data to improve your ecommerce store’s LLM visibility:

Focus on Product Pages First

While there’s value in marking up other templates (like category pages, blog posts, or FAQs), your product pages are where it counts most.

This is the data that LLMs and search engines will use to:

• Associate your product with relevant categories and attributes
• Match your offering to long-tail purchase prompts
• Feed structured knowledge into their product and shopping systems

Here are the fields to include:

• @type: Product
• GTIN, SKU, MPN
• Brand
• Description
• Offer block (price, currency, availability, URL)
• Review/rating info if available

Use your schema to reflect reality, not just fill fields. But also add as much context as you can.

If your product is eco-friendly, US-made, sweatproof — encode it. The better your markup, the more context LLMs have to surface your product in nuanced prompts.

Validate Your Schema and Confirm It’s Visible

Check your schema is valid with tools like:

• Google Rich Results Test
• Schema.org Validator

Make sure the schema is present in the raw HTML — not loaded with JavaScript.

Bonus: Extend to Reviews, FAQs, HowTo

Once your product markup is solid, consider adding:

• Review and AggregateRating blocks
• FAQPage markup for your PDPs or Help Center
• HowTo schema for tutorial content or sharing post-purchase use cases

These all help build context around your product and can influence how LLMs present or recommend it.

Once you’ve marked up your product pages, the next step is scaling an effective structure across your entire catalog. That’s where a high-quality product feed comes in.

Step 3: Build a High-Quality Product Feed

Structured feeds have been essential for Google Shopping, Meta Advantage+, and TikTok Shop for a while.

And now, they’re becoming equally important for AI-powered discovery. Especially as platforms like Perplexity and OpenAI build out product recommendation systems.

Think of your feed as the dataset LLMs will eventually pull from when answering questions like this:

Perplexity has launched a Merchant Program accepting feed uploads, called the Perplexity Merchant Program. This lets ecommerce sellers have even more control over how their products can appear in AI responses.

Plus, OpenAI is quietly testing ways to let store owners upload feeds to improve their AI responses for product recommendations.

These feeds will likely drive future AI shopping experiences across chat, search, and even voice interfaces.

So how do you set your product feeds up in an LLM-friendly way?

What to Include

To optimize your product feeds for AI, start with the essentials:

• Product title
• Description
• Price
• Availability
• Product URL
• GTIN or MPN + Brand
• Image URL

Note: Tools like ChatGPT may still generate their own versions of some of these (like titles). But it’ll still typically use information from places like your product feeds to inform its responses.

After you’ve added the basics, layer in high-value fields like:

• Category or taxonomy
• Color, material, and size variants
• Shipping cost and speed
• Review count and star rating
• Custom labels for campaigns or segmentation

Use the same language your customers use.

This means writing product information the way your customers actually talk and search, not how your internal teams or suppliers describe things. For example:

Instead of:

“Athletic footwear with moisture-wicking synthetic upper”

Write:

“Running shoes that keep your feet dry”

How do you find out how they talk?

Look at your customer reviews, support tickets, and search queries that already drive traffic to your store.

For example, they might search for “cozy sweater” not “knitted pullover.” This can inform your title and description choices.

How to Submit Product Feeds to LLMs

Here’s how to submit your product feeds for three of the biggest AI interfaces.

Perplexity:

In 2024, Perplexity launched their Merchant Program. This fuels the platform’s shopping experience for Pro users. Your products may appear in carousel-style answers and shopping-focused prompts, and shoppers can buy without leaving Perplexity.

You can find out more about the program and sign up here.

OpenAI (ChatGPT):

OpenAI is piloting product discovery via ChatGPT’s “Search + Product Discovery” initiative. They’re exploring using uploaded feeds to power future buying experiences inside ChatGP.

Fill out this interest form to apply.

Google Merchant Center (AI Mode and Gemini):

Google’s Merchant Center feeds power Shopping Ads, organic Shopping listings, and likely influence how Google’s AI systems interpret and surface your products in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Step 4: Monitor LLM Crawlers

Once you’ve put all the steps in place to make your ecommerce store crawlable by LLMs, the next step is to make sure they’re actually accessing your content and product pages.

Here’s how to do that:

Set Up Bot Monitoring

Use server logs or your CDN (like Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai) to track requests from:

• GPTBot: This user agent is used by OpenAI to crawl web content that may be used in training their generative AI foundation models.
• OAI-SearchBot: Used by OpenAI to link to and surface websites in search results in ChatGPT’s search features.
• PerplexityBot: Identifies Perplexity’s AI search crawler when it accesses websites.
• Google uses various Googlebot user agents to crawl the web, depending on the type of content being crawled (e.g., desktop, mobile, images). You can find a detailed list of common Googlebot user agent strings and their purposes in resources from Google for Developers.

For each of these bots, track:

• Which pages they’re crawling (PDPs, collection pages, sitemap, feed)
• How often they come back
• How crawl patterns evolve over time

This helps confirm they’re discovering your content and gives you a baseline to measure progress.

Step 5: Shift from Keyword Lists to Prompts and Personas

Keyword research is still important. But you also need to think about how your customers are likely to prompt AI tools when looking for products like yours.

LLMs answer questions, interpret context, and make recommendations based on how people naturally speak.

That means you need to rethink how you optimize for product discovery. Not by keywords alone, but by personas, use cases, and prompt formats.

Start With What You Know

Your best-performing SEO and paid search keywords are still the foundation. They tell you:

• Which products and categories convert
• How people describe their intent in short-form searches
• Which attributes drive action (e.g., “cooling sheets,” “queen size,” “organic cotton”)

Use these to anchor your prompt strategy — but expand outward.

Think in Prompts, Not Just Queries

As people become more savvy with how AI tools work, more and more shoppers are going beyond just typing in “best bed sheets.” They’re asking:

Medium-length prompts:

• “Best cooling sheets for hot sleepers”
• “Softest bed sheets under $100”
• “What kind of sheets stay on the bed all night?”

Longer, context-rich prompts:

• “I’m a side sleeper who gets hot at night. What bed sheets will stay cool and not cling to my skin?”
• “Looking for breathable, hypoallergenic sheets that work well in humid climates”
• “I have sensitive skin and eczema. What’s a good sheet material that won’t irritate me?”

Your goal is to build context around your products that lines up with this kind of language and framing.

Note: You can’t predict exactly what your customers will ask, and there are infinite ways they can do it. But thinking about prompts — not just keywords — will put you in a good place to be able to optimize your ecommerce pages for LLMs.

Map Your Catalog to Prompt-Based Use Cases

Think in layers:

• By need: cooling, breathable, wrinkle-resistant, organic
• By persona: hot sleeper, allergy sufferer, luxury buyer, college student
• By situation: new apartment, guest bedroom, summer refresh, wedding registry
• By problem: sheets come loose, feel scratchy, trap heat, shrink in the wash

This is how you start to think of your items like answers and solutions, not just products.

Use These Prompts to Guide Content and Merchandising

Let this prompt structure inform your:

• Product page copy and comparison points
• Blog posts and videos
• Social media posts
• FAQs and Help Center content
• Category names and filters
• Product feed descriptions and attributes

LLMs can pull from all of it — so make sure you’re using the kind of language your real customers use everywhere.

Step 6: Seed Your Brand Across the Web

Even if your site is crawlable, your schema is perfect, and your feed is super optimized — LLMs still learn about your brand based on what people are saying about you elsewhere.

They’re trained on massive web-scale datasets, so third-party content — like reviews, Reddit mentions, YouTube transcripts, forums, blog posts — can carry as much (or more) weight than your owned channels.

If you want to show up in AI answers, your brand needs to already exist in the wider conversation.

Where You Want to Show Up

AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude all lean on third-party review sites and forums in their answers to brand and product-related queries.

These are the places you’ll want to show up in order to be included in those answers:

• Review sites: Trustpilot, Amazon, Google Reviews, BBB, niche review sites
• Reddit, Quora, & niche forums: Participate in threads and subtly seed your product category (without being spammy)
• YouTube: Appear in titles, transcripts, and product comparisons — even if you’re not the creator (consider partnering with creators to do this)
• Affiliate content: Get included in roundups, listicles, and side-by-side comparisons

Showing up in these places is half the battle. The other component is how you show up.

Ideally, you’ll want to be mentioned alongside competitors (“like Brooklinen but…”). And in the right, relevant context (“these are some of the best cooling sheets for eczema”).

A lot of this is going to be completely out of your control (especially on platforms like Reddit). But good marketing practices can make it more likely that people will naturally talk about your brand in the way you want them to.

This Is Just Good Marketing

Gaining LLM visibility is a byproduct of an effective multichannel marketing strategy.

If you’re running a strong content program, building brand awareness, and actively participating in your category — you’re already seeding relevance.

What’s new is the urgency: LLMs are already using these signals to decide which brands deserve to be recommended.

Related: See our LLM Seeding Playbook for tactics, templates, and outreach strategies.

Step 7: Track Your AI Search Visibility

In traditional SEO, visibility was deterministic: rank #1 for a keyword, get X% of clicks.

That model is breaking.

AI-powered discovery works differently. Your brand might appear in one version of a response, but not the next.

Whether your ecommerce store is included depends on how the user phrases their prompt, how much brand recognition you have, and how often you’re referenced across the web.

So, your measurement strategy needs to adapt.

What to Track

Start by building a prompt library — real questions your customers might ask:

• Organize prompts by topic (e.g., cooling sheets, organic materials, luxury bedding)
• Group them by persona (e.g., hot sleepers, allergy sufferers, budget-conscious buyers)
• Then choose a tool to test visibility: like Semrush AI SEO Toolkit, Peec.AI, or Profound

Here’s how it looks in Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit:

For each prompt, ask:

• Does your brand show up?
• If not, who does?
• What sources are the tools citing?
• What kind of language are the tools using?

Over time, this gives you a clearer picture of how visible your brand is across different use cases.

LLM Optimization Is Still New, But It’s Gaining Traction Fast

AI-driven search is already reshaping how people discover products. The shift is subtle now, but it won’t stay that way for long.

What used to be a clear SEO vs. paid search strategy is now blending into a broader question:

When someone asks a smart machine what to buy… will it know you exist?

This guide gave you a playbook to start answering that question:

• Clean up your technical foundation (crawlability, schema, product feeds)
• Rethink your discovery strategy around prompts and personas
• Show up across the web in ways that reinforce what makes your brand unique

It’s a lot. But the good news?

If you’ve already invested in great products, strong messaging, and a multi-channel strategy, you’re not starting from scratch.

Still need help nailing the fundamentals?

Check out these guides:

• 9 Ecommerce Website Examples to Copy for Better Results
• 11 Ecommerce Marketing Strategies to Drive Traffic and Sales
• Ecommerce SEO: 6 Proven Strategies to Rank Higher

The post How to Optimize Your Ecommerce Store for AI Search (7 Steps) appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-14 22:41:19

You don’t need an SEO plugin to help your website rank in Google.

In fact, you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing with them.

But:

They can make optimizing your website a whole lot easier if you do use them correctly.

We’re talking:

• Faster page speeds
• Better optimized content
• Fewer technical SEO issues

All without touching any code.

So how do you choose which plugin to use? Can you use more than one?

And the big one — should you use Yoast or Rank Math?

You’ll get the answers to these burning questions below.

But first, here’s the tl;dr on the best SEO plugins for WordPress:

Note: We’ve stuck with plugins that can directly improve your SEO. You won’t see analytics plugins like Monster Insights or external keyword generators on this list. These are useful tools in their own right — but they’re not true SEO plugins.

1. Rank Math

Best all-in-one SEO plugin for new WordPress sites

Pricing: Free version available; Pro plans start at $7.99/month billed annually

Rank Math has pretty much everything you need in an SEO plugin. If you’re new to SEO, it’ll handle all the important stuff for you, including:

• Content optimization
• Image SEO
• Internal and external linking
• Local SEO
• Schema markup
• Sitemaps
• Redirects

And way more.

It’s actually the go-to recommendation from our own Head of SEO, Leigh McKenzie:

“Rank Math is my no. 1 choice across the board. For any site starting from scratch, I’d always recommend Rank Math first.”

Let’s go through some of the features behind his recommendation:

Manage Metadata and Social Previews

Starting with the basics, Rank Math lets you manage your page’s SEO title, meta description, and how it appears on social media — right within the post editor:

It also lets you preview what the post will look like when you share it on Facebook and X/Twitter:

This gives you more control over how your content looks in SERPs and social feeds.

It’s a pretty rudimentary feature, and hardly one that separates it from the likes of Yoast below when taken in isolation.

But how your social content looks can have a big impact on the engagement your posts get — and how many people click through to read your content. So it’s a useful feature for those looking to share their content beyond their blog.

Get SEO Suggestions as You Write

Rank Math also gives you SEO guidance as you’re creating your content in the WordPress editor. Like having your own SEO assistant you can call on as you write.

It’ll highlight things like missing focus keywords in your meta description, intro, and throughout your content.

But honestly? I never use this feature.

So why am I calling it out here?

Because when you’re just starting out creating SEO content, it’s actually super helpful for keeping you on track.

Sure, once you’re familiar with the basics of content optimization, you’ll do all of this naturally. But as a beginner, this gentle guidance can help you learn faster (and create better optimized content in the process).

Plus, you can click “Fix with AI” to generate a suggestion and save time on the small changes.

It’s not going to be perfect. But for a one-click, two-second job?

I’ll happily use this, because it speeds up optimization.

Plus, you can tweak or regenerate the output anyway, so it’s useful as a starting point.

Broken Links and Redirects

Rank Math flags broken links on your site using its built-in 404 Monitor.

You can then set up a redirect right from the dashboard:

This feature keeps your internal links working. It ensures you’re passing authority between your pages and that you’re offering a good user experience.

It also reduces plugin bloat as you don’t need a separate plugin to handle broken links.

The fact the free version of the plugin comes with built-in redirection capabilities is a massive win in my book.

I’ve personally leaned on this particular part of the plugin heavily multiple times.

Firstly, it’s great for just quickly setting up redirects when you change the URL of a post (it even does this automatically).

But you can also set it up to move entire categories of posts or pages through the filters.

Just choose “contains” and you’ll be able to move all your content from /old-path/page to /new-path/page without your users even noticing — and without any hassle on your end.

I don’t see enough people praising Rank Math for the redirect functionality. But honestly it’s a lifesaver.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Rank Math clearly has a lot of features, which is great. But it can also feel overwhelming at first. That’s just the nature of any “all-in-one” style plugin.

However, once you know where things are and what you need, it’s fairly easy to navigate.

Also, on the content improvement side of things, readability feedback is pretty limited. It checks basic things like paragraph length and image use. But it won’t help you improve sentence structure or tone.

(If you need more focus on that, check out the fifth plugin on this list.)

But overall, these drawbacks are pretty minor. Rank Math is still our number one recommendation if you need an SEO plugin.

2. Yoast SEO

Best for beginners who want step-by-step SEO guidance inside WordPress

Pricing: Free version available; Premium starts at $99/year

Yoast SEO is probably the first plugin you came across when you started looking into WordPress SEO. And for good reason — it’s installed on 10+ million sites and has around 26K five-star reviews.

It’s been around for so long and has such a clear purpose that its WordPress plugin directory URL path is literally just “/wordpress-seo/”:

It’s the second of the “big two” WordPress SEO plugins alongside RankMath, and it’s worth addressing why we put it second before we get into the details of the plugin itself.

In summary: We usually recommend Rank Math for a first-time WordPress site owner. It’s packed with features, and its free version has the edge over Yoast in a few areas. These include redirects, multiple focus keywords per post, and more extensive schema markup options.

But Yoast is pretty evenly matched in a lot of ways. Especially if you opt for the paid version.

In fact, this is the specific SEO plugin we use for Backlinko.

My personal recommendation is to try them both (separately) and see which one works best for you.

Note: Don’t use them both at the same time, as running multiple all-in-one SEO plugins on the same site can lead to compatibility issues.

Okay, now let’s go through what I like most about the Yoast SEO plugin:

Optimize Search and Social Previews

Like Rank Math, Yoast helps you optimize how your content appears both in search results and on social media.

You can easily update your SEO title, meta description, and URL slug for every page or post:

You also get a live preview of how your content will appear in Google search results and on socials.

It’s very similar to Rank Math in this respect. But I wanted to call it out here anyway as it’s some fairly fundamental functionality for a WordPress SEO plugin.

Get Real-Time SEO and Readability Feedback

Yoast analyzes your SEO as you write, using a simple green/orange/red traffic light system.

Green means you’re following best practices, while orange suggests there’s room for improvement. Red highlights critical issues you should prioritize.

Each suggestion is actionable, helping you easily optimize your pages, even if you’re new to SEO.

Yoast also gives you a detailed breakdown of your content’s readability.

You’ll see checks for things like passive voice, sentence length, and consecutive sentence starters. In this respect, it does offer a bit more than Rank Math.

My advice: Don’t chase all the green lights thinking it’ll help you rank. Content quality and value for the reader matter far more than hitting a certain percentage or score.

However, Yoast’s feedback does help you spot common issues and make your writing clearer for both users and search engines.

Like I said in the Rank Math section, I don’t personally use these features. But beginner me found himself looking to them quite a lot for basic guidance.

Manage XML Sitemaps

Yoast creates a dynamic XML sitemap for your site and updates it as you publish new content.

Here’s what it looks like for Backlinko:

This is a basic but very useful feature (Rank Math does this too).

Just make sure to submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console. This helps Google discover and index your content.

Further reading: Top 8 Sitemap Generator Tools in 2025 (Free & Premium)

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Yoast’s SEO scoring system can feel rigid. For example, you might get flagged for not using your main keyword in the first sentence even if it doesn’t fit there naturally.

And I’ll often see site owners that are new to SEO sticking too closely to these guidelines and creating pretty mediocre content as a result.

But if you treat the feedback as guidance, not strict rules, Yoast can still be a helpful way to catch easy-to-miss issues.

Further reading: Learn more about the plugin with our full Yoast SEO guide.

A word on a few alternatives before I move on:

The all-in-one SEO plugin market is dominated by Yoast and Rank Math. But another big player we can’t forget to mention is aptly named All in One SEO (AISEO).

It does a lot of the same stuff as the other two, but they just do it better. It’s missing key free features like redirects, and it can get pricey if you want to use it on several sites.

Like I said earlier though, you should try these plugins out for yourself if you’re struggling to choose. The free options are more than enough in most cases, and they’ll give you a taste of what to expect should you want to commit to a paid option.

FYI: I don’t personally pay for any SEO plugins besides WP Rocket (more on that next). But we do use Yoast Premium on Backlinko and Rank Math Pro on Traffic Think Tank.

3. WP Rocket

Best for improving your website speed without needing a developer

Pricing: $59/year for one website, $119/year for three websites

WP Rocket is probably my favorite of all the plugins on this list, even if it’s not technically the best overall. It’s a performance plugin designed to speed up WordPress websites. That’s all it aims to do, and boy does it succeed.

I run a somewhat well optimized site, and here’s how it looks in PageSpeed Insights without WP Rocket installed:

After installing the plugin and turning on the most important features, here’s how it looks:

Let’s just pause on those numbers for a second:

• 20 point increase in overall performance score
• 2.1 second improvement in first contentful paint
• 30 ms to 0 ms total blocking time
• 2.8 second improvement in largest contentful paint

Again, it’s a decent baseline to begin with. But WP Rocket improves my site performance in ways I otherwise can’t manage on a site that’s quite heavy on the Elementor elements.

That’s an important point in itself: you 100% can make your site run fast without SEO plugins like WP Rocket.

But you will need to make sacrifices unless you’re an experienced developer (which I am not).

So if you also want to improve your site speed without digging into the code or harming your UX, here’s why you should consider WP Rocket:

Caching Made Simple

WP Rocket makes performance optimization easy. For example, I didn’t have to touch a single setting for the caching features to kick in, and you can clear your cache at the touch of a button:

This is a feature some WordPress hosts and other plugins offer (my own web host does, for example). But I like WP Rocket’s because it’s easy to do within a dashboard that also does so much more.

For a non-developer like me, this kind of out-of-the-box performance boost is extremely useful.

File Optimization

You can also dig into advanced settings to minify your CSS and JavaScript, optimize images and fonts, and connect to a CDN.

These tweaks can cut load time, reduce file sizes, and can even improve Core Web Vitals. In other words, they can have a major impact on your site speed.

(And as someone with no coding experience, there’s no way I could do any of this without a plugin.)

Now for the second and only other feature on this list that I’ll describe with the phrase “life saver”:

It comes with one-click exclusions for popular tools like Google Analytics, AdSense, and Stripe, along with other WordPress plugins, like Elementor:

That means you’re less likely to break your tracking, ads, payment processing, or UX while optimizing. Which, believe me, is easy (and frustrating) to do.

And you don’t need to dig through documentation to figure out what to exclude.

You can also create custom exclusions, and these are handy if you do know what’s causing issues.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Some layout elements may break if you enable file optimization without adding exclusions. In my case, my Elementor post cards got distorted. But excluding the right files fixed it.

(Finding the right files to exclude took me a lot of trial and error, but your mileage may vary.)

The settings can also feel pretty technical if you’re not a web developer. I had to Google a lot before knowing what to toggle.

However, WP Rocket’s help center docs were solid. And once everything was dialed in, my site’s performance improved significantly. (Again, see the screenshots at the start of this section.)

Free alternative: When I first started playing around with WordPress websites, I used Autoptimize for a lot of the things WP Rocket does.

It’s not as extensive when you use the free version, but it’ll get you a meaningful chunk of the way there if site speed is a big concern for you.

Plus, I still run this on a few of my lower priority sites when I just want to tick the main performance boxes.

4. The SEO Framework

Best lightweight, minimalist SEO plugin

Pricing: Free; paid plans start at $7/month (paid yearly)

The SEO Framework is a free and lightweight plugin for WordPress that quietly handles the SEO essentials.

It’s no Rank Math or Yoast, but it will still do a lot of the most important things for you.

This plugin is popular among developers for a reason. It runs fast, doesn’t clutter your dashboard, and avoids the “all-in-one” bloat you get with other SEO plugins.

Here’s what you get with the SEO Framework plugin:

Get Instant SEO Feedback

One of the SEO Framework’s most helpful features is the plugin’s color-coded SEO bar. This gives you a quick visual of how well optimized your pages are.

At first, the labels can look a bit cryptic.

But once you hover over them, they explain what’s working and what needs improvement.

For example, the plugin flagged my meta title as “far too short” and noted that it was automatically generated from the page title. (At least I assume that’s what the “TG” means.)

It explained that the title lacked information, which helped me understand I’d need to customize it to improve its SEO performance.

Honestly, I’d maybe like a little more specific detail here. It’s not clear what “more information” it means. But it does make it easy to do a high-level audit of your content optimization without opening each page.

If it flags your title or description, you can open the page editor and tweak the meta fields directly to optimize them:

The SEO Framework also shows each page’s indexing status. If a page is indexed, it appears in green. If there’s an indexing issue, it tells you exactly what’s wrong.

In my case, it showed that all my published pages were indexed correctly. And a few unpublished ones were flagged, as expected:

Obviously it’s not going to be as in-depth as Google Search Console. But it’s a useful at-a-glance overview of your overall indexing status.

Automate SEO Title and Meta Description Generation

Once you find titles and meta descriptions to optimize, the SEO Framework automatically generates meta them based on your content.

But you can still tweak auto-generated meta elements to add more value as needed.

That’s it, that’s the feature.

It’s nothing fancy, and it’s not always perfect. But for a lightweight SEO plugin, this is a great timesaver.

You can also control how your page appears on social media. You can even add a custom image for Facebook or X:

If you like this functionality of the likes of Yoast and Rank Math but don’t need all the extra features, the SEO Framework plugin could be all you need.

Simple Base Plugin with Room to Expand

The SEO Framework is intentionally minimal to be fast, lightweight, and free of unnecessary extras. That makes it a great choice if you’re looking for something that won’t slow your site down or overwhelm you with options.

And if you ever need additional features, like schema markup, third-party connections, or local SEO support, you can always install them as separate extensions.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The SEO Framework is lightweight, which means it’s also feature-light. It has the basics, but it won’t cover everything for you.

To get a bit pickier, I noticed that when I try to edit an automatically generated SEO title or meta description, the entire field clears as soon as I click it.

That means I can’t just tweak a few words. I have to retype the whole thing from scratch. It would be a smoother experience if I could simply edit the existing text in place.

But the fact this is such a small and specific issue is testament to just how good the plugin is.

5. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Best for optimizing your content for search right inside the WordPress editor

Pricing: Free, but you can optimize more content with an active Semrush subscription

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant helps you optimize content as you write it inside the WordPress editor. It’s not an all-in-one solution, and is purely content-focused.

It works by pulling recommendations from your target keyword and analyzing your draft in real time for SEO, readability, tone of voice, and originality.

Let’s take a look at my favorite features of the plugin:

Optimize Your Readability

Semrush calls out exactly what you need to fix to improve your content’s readability, including:

• Sentences that are hard to read
• Suggestions to use active voice
• Specific words to swap for simpler alternatives

This is super useful if you want to make your content easier to understand and more engaging.

Improve Your On-Page SEO

The plugin also provides clear on-page SEO recommendations based on your target keywords.

At the top of the panel, it shows whether you’ve used your main keywords effectively.

When I created the blog post in the example below, I entered two main keywords: “content marketing” and “content marketing for small businesses.”

Since I used both naturally throughout the article, Semrush marked them green:

But below that, it suggests semantically related keywords based on content that’s already ranking well for these terms. As you include those terms, they turn green too:

This is where the Semrush plugin goes a step further than the likes of Yoast. It leverages Semrush’s data to give you a helpful way to improve your topical depth based on what’s already ranking — which is a key part of building topical authority.

Why does this matter?

Because search engines like Google are good at recognizing when a piece of content truly covers the topic in depth — rather than just using the target keyword a bunch of times.

When you include related terms, you’re showing Google that your content is contextually relevant and comprehensive.

Analyze Your Tone of Voice

Wondering what your content actually sounds like from a reader’s perspective?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant shows whether your writing comes across as casual, formal, or somewhere in between. And whether your tone stays consistent throughout the post.

For example, it labeled my draft as “Neutral” with 95% tone consistency:

That’s a helpful signal that the post flows well without jumping between writing styles.

That said, don’t let the score alone inform your edits. Instead, use it as a signal to evaluate your writing with fresh eyes and ask:

“Does this sound like me/my brand?”

It also pointed out a few phrases that sounded slightly off-brand. It then suggested alternatives to smooth them out:

They’re not always perfect suggestions, but it’s useful if you’re writing for a specific brand voice and want to keep it consistent across all your articles.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is not a comprehensive SEO plugin. It focuses on optimizing content for search engines and doesn’t replace Yoast or Rank Math.

So, it’s best to use it in combination with other SEO plugins.

Note: Try this plugin along with more tools to improve your SEO with a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Ready to Choose the Right SEO Plugin for Your Website?

The right SEO plugin can massively improve your WordPress website’s performance.

But it’s also important to set clear expectations.

These tools help you optimize. They don’t rank content for you.

To actually improve your visibility in search, you need to publish great content, improve your site’s performance, and cover the basics of SEO.

So, what should you do next?

Start with our complete SEO checklist to make sure your site is fully optimized for search.

The post 5 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (Tried & Tested) appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-14 21:59:42

A few months back, one of my clients pinged me on Slack and said:

Sure enough, when prompted, ChatGPT confidently responded, “No, the platform does not have that feature, but this other competitor does!”.

For obvious reasons, this was worrying for the client.

Not only was ChatGPT spreading misinformation about their product, it was actively pitching an alternative solution.

The source of the misinformation: A single old blog post that hadn’t been updated in two years.

How many potential buyers decided not to book a sales call because of this?

How many had discovered a new competitor instead?

This issue signals a large shift in how bottom-of-funnel product research is done.

Before: Your website was the source of truth.

It was your “always on” salesperson. You kept your homepage and product pages fresh, and that was where buyers did their digging.

Now: Large language models (LLMs) are a product research assistant. A new touchpoint at a critical stage in the buying journey.

They’re the modern day gatekeepers, acting as the layer between you and your target audience, communicating on your behalf.

And their source of info? It’s often sources you’d forgotten even existed.

As marketers, it falls to us to make sure LLMs are communicating the right things in the right way about our products and services.

In this article, I’ll show you the 7-step playbook my team is developing to tackle this challenge — what we’re calling Branded Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

Free resource: For step 6, we’ve created a handy spreadsheet to help you ideate common questions. Download it here.

What is Branded GEO?

Branded GEO is the process of making sure conversational AIs and LLMs give accurate, helpful, and up-to-date answers about your brand. It focuses on branded prompts and queries.

This targets a highly valuable audience segment, including those who are:

• In the market to buy a solution or service like yours
• Already know you are a viable option and are exploring your offer

This segment is showing the highest intent — they’re asking questions about your product, and they’re using your brand name in their prompts.

Like branded SEO, branded GEO is easier to influence. It’s more actionable than trying to optimize for broad industry queries. For that reason, it’s a fantastic starting point if you want to explore GEO.

Note: Generative engine optimization is the broader practice of optimizing for AI-powered search systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews. Branded GEO is a specific subset focused on branded queries.

For the following exercise, I’ll use ChatGPT as the LLM and the B2B SaaS product, Airtable, as an example.

Airtable has recently undergone some serious positioning and product pivots, so it illustrates the new challenges of branded GEO.

Let’s start with a quick setup.

Step 1: Set Up Your LLM

Head to ChatGPT and turn on temporary mode. This avoids any personalization skewing your results.

Also turn on the “search” feature — this ensures ChatGPT is accessing information after June 2024 when it was last trained.

This is currently the data we can influence.

Step 2: Enter Your First Branded Prompt

Next, prompt ChatGPT with a simple question: “What is [your brand name]?”.

Here are the results for Airtable:

Step 3: Analyze the Response

Pay attention to how ChatGPT describes your product and company.

Is it accurate? Is it how you would describe your company?

Or do things need to change?

With Airtable, we see what must be a frustrating situation playing out.

Airtable pivoted in June 2025, shifting away from their “super powerful spreadsheet” positioning and relaunching as an:

That’s quite the change. And ChatGPT hasn’t caught up yet.

Here’s how Airtable positions themselves versus how ChatGPT does:

Luckily, most readers are unlikely to see such a drastic mismatch.

But at the current rate of technological innovation, almost all companies are undergoing continuous reinvention, and so you are likely to find outdated features and positioning.

Step 4: Find the Source of Misinformation

In this step, we start to tackle the misinformation by looking for its source.

We usually find that ChatGPT has sourced its information from:

• An outdated article
• A LinkedIn page that hasn’t been updated in three years
• A landing page that reflects the “old you”
• A hallucination due to completely missing information on that topic

As a quick example, I was recently living in Melbourne, and ChatGPT picked that up from a LinkedIn post and stated that my agency, Spicy Margarita, was founded in Melbourne. (We’re based in the UK).

Despite my travel plans, I wasn’t keen to be positioned as an Australian company, so I quickly removed that mention of Melbourne, and ChatGPT’s response adapted.

To address the misinformation you find, visit the sources used and look for a match between the language used by ChatGPT and the words on the page.

See that it says you cost $1,000? Find the source that says that and update it. Fixing the issue is often this simple (unless there is hallucination, which we address in the next step).

To operationalize this process, collate all the sources driving misinformation into a spreadsheet and note down:

• Whether that source should be deleted or updated
• Specific text that needs to be changed
• Specific text that needs to be added — for example, if a feature is missing, you can spell it out in the sources

For our Airtable example, we can see that a highly trusted source (Wikipedia) is currently out of date.

If we worked for Airtable, we’d start with the Wikipedia article. They should note this down and edit this page with their new positioning as soon as possible.

As a major, trusted source of internet knowledge, updating Wikipedia is likely to help influence LLMs, but it may not fix the positioning issue in one fell swoop.

Step 5: Publish, Update, or Delete Sources

For smaller brands with a relatively small web footprint, we find this task is more straightforward.

Take your latest positioning, messaging, and features, and make sure they are represented in key sources LLMs are referencing. Ideally, refresh every source that mentions your brand — from social media accounts to on-site and off-site web pages.

Brands with a larger web presence will find this task more challenging.

If, like Airtable, you have outdated articles written about you across 100s of websites you don’t control, outreach may need to be operationalized to update or take down those sources. If you have no luck with that, we’d suggest running a new campaign that seeds LLMs with lots of new sources that contain your up-to-date information.

Further reading: LLM Seeding: A New Strategy to Get Mentioned and Cited by LLMs

Given sources like Zapier and Airtable’s own starter guide (pictured below) still have their old positioning, there’s more work to do.

Here’s the branded GEO adjustment we would make for Wikipedia:

You may also find that LLMs are hallucinating something entirely. This can’t be fixed by updating or removing a source. This often happens because they didn’t find an answer in any sources.

If LLMs are hallucinating an answer, you’ll want to try to influence the answer by creating a source that answers the question with the correct information.

Start building a content roadmap with new topics to cover, directly answering those key questions your target buyer has.

These can be hosted on your blog or help center, and serve dual purposes: for branded GEO and as helpful sales material.

Step 6: Expand Your Branded Question Prompts

So far, we’ve asked just one question about your brand.

But, prospective customers are likely asking many, many questions that you’ll want to monitor.

Unfortunately, exact data on those questions is still not available.

Prompts are unlike traditional keywords. They’re often longer and more personalized. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize for the less long-tail prompts and hope that bleeds through.

We can make educated guesses at the topics LLM users are asking questions about using six methods:

1. Ask Your Inbound Leads

I ask every inbound lead who found me via ChatGPT what their prompts and journey were. One even pulled the conversation up and read the exact prompt back to me — it said “I want an SEO agency in the B2B space who is staying up-to-date with AI,” and our agency came up.

This kind of insight is gold dust.

It shows you how your audience prompts, what issues they face, and what content and GEO efforts of yours are already working.

A similar technique is to look in sales insights platforms like Gong for mentions of ChatGPT and to encourage your sales team to ask the question for you.

2. Start With Common Questions

Begin with general questions that people ask about brands. Then, tailor those questions to fit your specific situation.

We’ve made a spreadsheet template to help you find the questions people ask AI about your brand.

3. Use a Keyword Research Tool

Head to your keyword research tool of choice and enter your brand name.

In Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, you can filter on “Questions” to pull a full list of the questions people are asking about your brand.

Find questions that someone considering your product might ask.

For example, these are a few I’d select for the Airtable before their pivot. Each question factors into the purchase decision.

4. Use Google Autocomplete

Another helpful tool for finding audience questions is Google Autocomplete.

You’ll find autocomplete is a part of normal Google Search. It anticipates and suggests search queries as you type, making predictions based on popular searches, your location, and your search history (so do this in incognito mode).

Enter these queries to see what people are asking:

• Is [brand name]
• How [brand name]
• Does [brand name]
• Where [brand name]
• When [brand name]
• What [brand name]

You can get more suggestions by adding each letter of the alphabet afterward, too. Like this:

To speed things up, I recommend taking screenshots of each autocomplete and uploading them all to ChatGPT for extraction and grouping.

5. Use ChatGPT Autocomplete

If you’re lucky enough to be represented in ChatGPT autocomplete already (at the time of writing, only very large brands are), this is also a place to dig into.

6. Talk to Your Sales and Support Teams

When we do this exercise with clients, we run a Q&A session with both the sales team and customer support teams.

This first-party insight is invaluable for predicting the questions your target audience has.

Here are six top questions from our client questionnaire:

• What common questions about your product do you get from prospects on sales calls?
• What do prospects misunderstand or get wrong before speaking to you?
• What common objections about your brand do you get from prospects?
• Do prospects ever mention ChatGPT and what they found there?
• What questions do people typically ask in your website chat about [brand name]?
• What usually triggers prospects to book a call or sign up for [brand name] now?

Step 7: Repeat

Now you’ve gathered your questions, it’s time to see how LLMs answer them and fix up the answers.

To do this, repeat steps 1-5.

Tracking the Impact of Branded GEO Work

The impact of branded GEO is twofold:

1. Relief: From knowing you’re being accurately represented by LLMs.
2. Additional Conversions: From removing inaccuracies and misinformation, adequately filling content gaps in your lower sales funnel, and better informing buyers before they join sales calls.

To track the impact of this exercise, we recommend:

1. Monitoring LLM output: Take your list of questions and compare the before and after. Monitor those regularly to confirm continued accuracy.
2. Track conversion metrics: Compare key conversion rates (sign-ups, demo requests, sales) before and after your LLM content improvements. I suggest you add a “Where did you hear about us?” to your sales booking forms to closely monitor leads that started in LLMs.
3. Sales team feedback: With the example in the introduction of this article, the sales team had been facing misinformation issues. If you’ve faced a similar issue, stay in close contact with them so get a pulse check on the impact.

The post Branded GEO: How to Control What AI Says About Your Brand appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-08 22:57:09

Short answer: Not yet.

But SEO as we know it is dying.

SEO used to work fairly consistently: write great content, sprinkle in keywords, land a few links — boom, rankings.

The better you followed the recipe, the better your results.

That worked because search was a relatively closed system.

Now?

It’s probabilistic.

You show up if you’ve done enough of the right things in enough places. If the system infers you’re part of the answer.

People have been announcing the death of SEO for years.

But this time, the question feels more urgent.

You might look at this projection from Semrush — showing traditional search declining while LLM traffic takes over — and call it: Game Over.

But here’s the thing:

Decline doesn’t equal death.

In this article, we’ll lay out exactly what happens as a channel moves from goldmine to ghost town — and show you where SEO sits on that curve today.

Spoiler: SEO isn’t dead yet.

But it’s changing.

And understanding that shift is how you can stay ahead.

What Makes a Marketing Channel “Dead”?

To determine whether SEO is dead, we need to understand how a marketing channel evolves.

Marketing channels follow a relatively standard lifecycle.

They start out as experimental, high-risk, and unproven (think Bluesky).

If they gain traction, they enter what Gary Vaynerchuk calls the “underpriced attention” phase. Even basic strategies see outsized returns.

Early Facebook Ads. Early TikTok. Peak LinkedIn.

But attention doesn’t stay cheap. As more people jump in, the channel becomes fairly priced.

It still delivers, but not without skill. You need strategy. Execution. Patience.

Email marketing today, for example.

Eventually, some channels tip into overpriced. You can still win — but only with deep pockets or elite execution.

Competitive Google Ads. Facebook Ads in 2025. Viable? Yes. Worth it? Not for everyone.

And then, some channels just… flatline. Negative ROI. Abandoned by 80%+ of marketers.

Still technically there — but not usually worth the time. Facebook organic for traffic, say, or Yellow Pages.

A single platform can have parts in completely different phases.

• Facebook organic for website traffic? Dead.
• Facebook organic for brand building and community? Still fairly priced.

And some channels that looked dead? They weren’t.

• The Yellow Pages are Phase 4 in most cities. But in some rural areas, they still convert.
• Direct mail is Phase 4 for most. But for hyper-local businesses, it can still be gold.

My point:

Phase 4 is rare.

Most channels don’t die. They evolve.

So, where does SEO sit on the curve?

Why People Keep Saying SEO Is Dead

Well, partly because marketers delight in announcing the death of clearly not dead things.

It’s a weird industry habit.

But also because SEO is sliding from Phase 2: Fairly Priced to Phase 3: Overpriced.

And when that happens, ROI drops, easy wins disappear, and frustration grows.

Traffic is dropping. Search behavior is shifting. The content landscape is flooded. And the job market feels unstable.

Put all that together?

It’s no surprise people are asking if SEO is on its last legs.

Let’s break down the four biggest reasons behind the panic — and separate signal from noise.

1. No-Click Search Results Are Killing Traffic

This didn’t start with AI answers.

Google’s been reducing clicks for a decade.

• Knowledge panels, calculators, unit converters: Handled factual queries
• Local packs & shopping carousels: Took over commercial-intent real estate
• Featured snippets (2015): Answered questions directly in the SERP
• People Also Ask (2016): Offered related answers—no clicks required
• AI Overviews (2024): Just the next step

So why does it feel worse now?

Because it is.

AI Overviews are among the most disruptive features Google has ever introduced for organic traffic.

Their click-stealing impact rivals or exceeds Featured Snippets — and in some cases, even Knowledge Panels.

The biggest difference is:

AI Overviews affect a much broader range of queries — especially informational and non-branded ones.

So yes, AI overviews are the latest in a long line of click-killing moves by Google.

Knowledge Panels hurt branded queries. AIOs impact every query type.

Calculators killed clicks for simple tasks. AIOs apply that behavior to everything.

If Featured Snippets were death by a thousand cuts, AIOs are a guillotine.

But here’s the twist:

Google’s AI Overviews aren’t pulling random answers out of thin air.

They’re sourcing from the same types of content that show up in organic search.

According to a study by Search Engine Land:

• Blog posts (46%) and news articles (20%) make up the majority of sources cited by AIOs.
• Structured, crawlable, keyword-aligned pages still earn visibility.
• And, while ChatGPT skews towards Wikipedia and global news sources for its data, Google’s Gemini relies heavily on company blogs.

In other words:

The SEO content you’re already creating still matters.

You just need to make it easier for AI to read and reuse.

Further reading: Want more tips for showing up in AIOs? Check out our guide to AI overviews.

2. Search Behavior Has Fragmented

We’re in the Search Everywhere era.

Source

Google still dominates, but things are changing.

Gen-Z uses social media as a search engine.

40% of young US adults are getting their news on TikTok.

Forums like Reddit and Quora are booming.

LLMs currently make up around 5.6% of all search behavior, up from 1.3% in early 2024.

So yes, search behavior is changing.

But this shift doesn’t mean traditional search engines are obsolete.

94.4% of searchers still use SERPs.

They’re just more likely to consult other sources as well.

Further reading: Build a Search Everywhere Optimization strategy with our guide.

3. It Feels Like AI Content Is Everywhere

The theory goes that, because anyone can create content in minutes with AI, SEO becomes a race to the bottom.

And it’s true that it’s easier than ever to create SEO content at scale.

But in practice, most content is still being created by human beings — entirely or with AI assistance.

In June 2025, AI content made up around 16% of all content (down from 19% in January) according to Originality.AI.

4. The SEO Job Market Might Be Tanking

SEO job listings dropped 37% in Q1 2024 compared to the same time in 2023.

But if you zoom in on the types of SEO roles being hired for across the year, the picture is more nuanced.

Some executional roles saw a dip in share over 2024:

• Content SEO made up 12.6% of SEO listings in Q1 — just 9.9% by Q4
• SEO Analyst roles dropped from 11.2% to 10.1%
• Technical SEO inched down from 5.8% to 5.4%

Meanwhile, more senior roles gained share:

• SEO Manager roles increased from 58% to 61%
• Director of SEO grew from 10.3% to 11.6%
• VP-level roles doubled their share — from 0.7% to 1.4%

The shift isn’t dramatic. But it’s directional.

Companies appear to be consolidating around smaller, more senior teams.

Less grunt work. More strategic oversight. And possibly, more reliance on AI or freelancers for execution.

So no, the SEO job market isn’t collapsing — just being restructured.

Why SEO Isn’t Dead in 2025

SEO today looks very different than it used to.

But it doesn’t meet the criteria of a dead marketing channel.

Search Volume Is Still Rising

Search activity isn’t shrinking—it’s growing.

Google search grew by over 21% in 2024, despite the impact of AI overviews. And it’s projected to increase again in 2025, according to estimates by Exploding Topics:

The narrative that searchers are switching over to LLMs is also flawed.

While people are using LLMs more and more, they aren’t necessarily using them for search.

Semrush says only 30% of ChatGPT prompts are similar to how people use search.

Things like:

• Asking for information
• Finding a website
• Comparing options
• Getting help with a purchase

The rest? More like chatting, writing, or brainstorming.

SEO Still Works

91% of marketers said SEO had a positive impact on their website performance and marketing goals in 2024.

Far from cutting SEO spend, companies are investing more.

The global SEO services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.2%.

It’s booming, not dying.

AI Overviews aren’t everywhere (yet)

As of May 2025, they show up in just 13.14% of all Google searches.

That means traditional search still handles about 86% of queries — for now.

More importantly, they’re still mostly triggered by low-value, informational queries.

But when it comes to commercial-intent keywords?

They’re still wide open.

Think long-tail phrases with CPCs over $2 and Keyword Difficulty under 30%.

That’s where you still need SEO.

SEO Job Listings Have Declined, But Only in Part

Entry-level and senior-level SEO roles actually increased in 2024.

This shift reflects more automation of routine SEO tasks — and heightened demand for strategic, senior-level expertise.

There are over 117,000 SEO jobs live on LinkedIn worldwide:

Looks like there’s still plenty of demand for SEO experts.

SEO Isn’t Dead — But It’s Changing Fast

SEO still drives results.

But ranking alone isn’t enough anymore.

To stay visible, you need to show up in search results and in AI-generated answers.

That’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.

It’s not about abandoning SEO. It’s about building on it.

Learn how to optimize for AI search with our 7-step GEO playbook.

The post Is SEO Dead? appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-08 20:46:27

ChatGPT-5 is here. Rolling out to 700M+ weekly users.

With it comes the usual hype and hot takes.

But if you’re in digital marketing, the real question is:

How does this change how people discover, research, and buy?

After months of using ChatGPT extensively (and watching competitors like Google, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok evolve), one thing’s clear:

The brands that win in AI search aren’t just chasing keywords and backlinks.

They’re building topical authority, earning third-party mentions, showing up on YouTube and social, and shaping how people talk about their brand.

In other words: they’re optimizing for how they get recommended in answers — no matter who’s asking the question.

If you want to see exactly how your brand shows up in AI answers, check out our guide to the best LLM tracking tools.

What’s New in ChatGPT-5

GPT-5 is definitely an improvement over GPT-4. But the early feeling among marketers, business owners, and even software developers is that it might not be the huge leap many thought it would be.

But still, in certain areas, there are some notable gains.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s new:

Overall Capabilities

In Sam Altman’s words: GPT-4 was like talking to a college student. GPT-5 is more like talking to an expert. A legitimate PhD in any topic area that you want. And it will be broadly available to the free tier, with limits.

For a lot of queries (think fairly basic questions), it’s much faster too. And while you used to have to choose which model to use for specific tasks to prioritize speed or raw ability, GPT-5 now makes that decision for you.

No more messing around with lots of different model names.

Better Writing

OpenAI claims that GPT-5 should write better, more natural content. For SEOs and digital marketers, this should mean improvements when it comes to AI-assisted content.

In particular, GPT-5 is significantly more accurate than its predecessors. Compared to previous models like GPT-4o and OpenAI o3, it hallucinates 4 to 10 times less often, depending on the task.

On typical ChatGPT prompts, the error rate drops to just 4.8% when using its “thinking” mode. This makes it much more reliable for research, planning, and everyday use.

But its outputs are still not a replacement for human-reviewed, high-quality content.

Coding

The biggest improvements with ChatGPT-5 over GPT-4, at least per OpenAI, are in the math and coding departments. The company seems particularly excited about its advanced coding abilities, trying to beat out competition from Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude).

“It opens up a whole new world of vibe coding, with some rough edges.”

I can see these improved coding capabilities being particularly useful for custom use cases.

For example, I could upload my fitness levels and preferred workouts, then ask ChatGPT to build a workout app that can give me specific workouts and help me track my progress over time.

Voice Mode Enhancements

You get more control over how to interact with the chatbot and, eventually, also the voice assistant. You’ll be able to choose between styles like concise and professional, or thoughtful and supportive.

Memory

The goal in terms of memory is for ChatGPT to really understand what’s meaningful to you. This way, the tool has more context about your specific situation. This should in theory lead to more tailored responses.

Plus, by mid-August, ChatGPT is gaining access to Gmail and Google Calendar. I can see this being super powerful from a business organization and productivity perspective.

Safety

ChatGPT-5 is significantly less deceptive. They have completely overhauled how they do safety training. Before, it was either to outright refuse or comply. Now it’s more nuanced.

OpenAI also introduced a new concept called “safe completions.” Essentially, it should maximize helpfulness, within safety constraints. If the model has to refuse, it will tell you why.

Knowledge Cutoff

According to OpenAI’s documentation, the model’s training data cutoff was Oct 1, 2024.

That’s newer than GPT-4o’s October 2023 cutoff, so it has a better grasp of late-2024 news changes, other trends.

It means more up-to-date baseline knowledge — but you’ll still need real-time data for anything happening in 2025.

Note: As with any new major release, it’s worth testing out for yourself to understand its capabilities for your specific needs. It’s easy for reviewers to cherry pick examples of it working incredibly well or not so well. The only way to know for sure is to try it yourself.

What Marketers Need to Know

ChatGPT-5 is a clear step up from GPT-4, with huge potential for both business and personal use.

But the fundamentals for marketers haven’t changed — the way you use LLMs and what they mean for your strategy still comes down to the same core principles.

1. ChatGPT-5 Still Pulls From Search Engines

We don’t know the exact mix GPT-5 uses for live lookups.

It could still be leaning on Google like ChatGPT-4o. It could be Bing. Most likely, it’s a blend of both plus OpenAI’s own retrieval system.

Either way, the rule for marketers stays the same:

• If you want to be in the mix for citations, you need to be findable in search engines
• That means optimizing for the right terms, having a technically sound site, and matching search intent

Optimizing for AI doesn’t replace SEO. It just makes SEO table stakes for getting recommended in AI answers.

2. AI Visibility Is a Multi-Surface Challenge

Here’s the reality today:

ChatGPT currently dominates in terms of total users. And its usage is growing:

But aside from ChatGPT, you need to consider the larger AI search space.

While ChatGPT reaches ~5X more users than Google’s Gemini app, the gap is not necessarily going to stay like that.

Just think back to the rise of Slack.

Guess who eventually reached the most users?

And the broad LLM technology behind ChatGPT is being used by all of its competitors.

For Google, that’s in AI Overviews (which reach nearly 17% of US queries) and Google AI Mode (their chat search experience).

Smaller competitors like Claude, Perplexity, Grok are still gaining share fast.

What’s the pattern?

AI discovery is not just tied to one tool. It’s happening across multiple generative engines — all with their own rules.

You need a brand strategy that works across:

• Prompts and questions
• Web results and citations
• Source quality and brand authority

Don’t just focus on ChatGPT because it’s the biggest, and your brand currently shows up there.

If your customers are using Google AI Mode, Claude, or Perplexity, and you’re not showing up in these tools, you’re leaving money on the table.

3. Brand Mentions > Backlinks

Search engines reward links.

LLMs reward mentions.

If your brand keeps showing up in high-quality content — and that content is clear, well-structured, and semantically relevant — you get pulled into more answers.

Whether GPT-5 now cites sources differently or not, it’s trained on the same core patterns, meaning:

Strong brands get surfaced more often.

If you want to future-proof your visibility:

• Publish content that earns mentions naturally
• Use clear product and brand language that LLMs can understand
• Strengthen your position in category-defining content

Want to know where you stand right now?

Use Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit to find out exactly how you fare against your competitors in terms of AI citations across Google AI Mode, SearchGPT, and Perplexity:

You’ll also see how often your brand is mentioned by these tools over time, so you can track the impact of your LLM optimization efforts:

4. Prompts Are the New Keywords

People don’t talk to LLMs like they search Google.

Instead of “best bed sheets,” they ask:

• “What are the comfiest bed sheets that don’t get too hot at night?”
• “I need high-quality sheets that won’t pill after a few washes. Any brand recs?”
• “What do hotels use for sheets, and can I buy something similar for home?”

The winners in ChatGPT-5 aren’t the ones who just rank in Google.

They’re the ones whose brand comes up when your ideal customer asks tools like ChatGPT a high-intent question.

Optimize for this by building a prompt library based on customer jobs-to-be-done.

Do this even faster with tools like Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit. Just enter your domain name and head to the “Questions” tab.

Scroll down and you’ll see questions real customers in your industry are asking.

Create new content around these questions, and use them to optimize your existing content.

Then, use the “Visibility” tab to monitor your share of voice across not just ChatGPT, but also Google’s AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini:

How to Win With GPT-5

GPT-5 is faster, more accurate, and more powerful.

But it won’t change the underlying reality for marketers:

If your brand isn’t clear, trusted, and visible in high-quality content, you will be invisible in AI answers.

Learn more about what really matters in our guide to LLM visibility.

The post ChatGPT-5 Is Here: What Search Marketers Need to Know appeared first on Backlinko.