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2026-06-11 05:06:44

Your content can rank on the first page of Google and still never be cited or mentioned by LLMs.

This makes sense once you understand query fan-out, a background process AI systems use to build answers.

When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity a question, it doesn’t default to the best-ranking page.

Instead, it runs related searches behind the scenes, pulling from the most relevant and reliable sources, regardless of position.

If your brand doesn’t show up in those searches (whether through your own content or third parties), you’re unlikely to make it into the answer.

High rankings don’t hurt, of course.

But in AI search, coverage and retrievability are king.

In this guide, I’ll teach you how to optimize your content strategy for query fan-out to help increase your AI visibility.

You’ll learn:

• Why LLMs use query fan-out
• How it behaves differently across major AI platforms
• Why it changes how you create and structure content
• A 6-step workflow for earning more citations in AI search

Free template: Our Query Fan-Out Audit Template includes ready-to-use spreadsheets for logging money prompts, sub-queries, and content gaps — plus a checklist to keep you on track. Download it now to follow along.

First, I’ll dive deeper into how query fan-out works.

What Is Query Fan-Out?

Query fan-out is a process AI search systems use to break a single user query into multiple sub-queries to create the most helpful response.

In other words, the AI “fans” the query out into a series of related sub-questions to build a more complete picture of the topic.

It then pulls information from multiple sources — editorial sites, Reddit threads, comparison and product pages — and synthesizes it into a single comprehensive answer.

AI systems use query fan-out for a few reasons:

• Confirm information: A single source might be wrong or biased. Running parallel sub-queries allows the system to cross-reference multiple sources and find consensus before committing to an answer.
• Handle complex, specific queries: When a question has multiple layers, like comparing two products across price, reliability, and long-term value, fan-out breaks it into manageable pieces that the system can research independently.
• Answer the real question: Someone searching “best toothbrush” probably also wants to know about price, battery life, and durability, even if they didn’t say so. Fan-out anticipates those needs and gathers evidence upfront.

For example, a search for “best toothbrush” might trigger sub-queries like “best electric toothbrushes [year]” and “best toothbrushes for sensitive gums.”

This helps the AI build a more complete and useful answer:

The AI then synthesizes those findings into a single answer that covers everything the user might want to know: top picks, price ranges, use-case breakdowns, and comparisons.

In this way, it anticipates the user’s needs, even though the original prompt (best toothbrush) was just two words.

What Query Fan-Out Is NOT

Now that we’ve covered what query fan-out is, let’s clear up a few common misconceptions.

Query fan-out is not:

• Keyword research: This is the process of finding terms your audience searches for. Query fan-out is something AI systems do automatically, behind the scenes, every time someone asks a question.
• People Also Ask: PAA is a visible SERP feature that shows users what else they might want to search. Fan-out happens in the background whether you can see it or not.
• A fixed set of queries: Only 27% of fan-out sub-queries remain consistent across repeated searches, according to a SurferSEO study. Sub-queries vary by phrasing, user context, and platform.

Further reading: AI SEO Myths, Debunked: A No-BS Guide for Marketers

Why Query Fan-Out Matters for AI Visibility

Understanding what query fan-out is only gets you so far. The real question is: What does it mean for your content strategy?

Here are four shifts that should make you rethink how you approach content.

You Don’t Need Top Rankings to Get AI Citations

Top rankings don’t automatically translate to AI citations.

When AI breaks a query into sub-queries, it pulls the most relevant and complete source for each one, regardless of where it ranks.

ChatGPT cites pages in position 21+ almost 90% of the time, according to a Semrush study.

Perplexity and Google show the same pattern.

AI Retrieves Passages, Not Pages

Rather than directing users to a page, AI systems scan your content and synthesize the exact passage that resolves a query.

This means that the earlier you answer a question, the better your chances of being extracted.

The data backs this up.

44.2% of citations in ChatGPT responses come from the first 30% of a page, while 31.1% come from the middle, and 24.7% from the final third, according to growth advisor Kevin Indig’s analysis of 1.2 million ChatGPT responses.

You’re Competing Across a Whole Topic, Not Individual Keywords

SEO often revolves around individual keywords. Query fan-out revolves around comprehensive coverage.

That’s why broad, well-connected coverage across a topic (think pillar pages and topic clusters) can help you earn more AI visibility.

Pro tip: Pages that rank for fan-out queries (not just the main query) are 161% more likely to get cited, according to a SurferSEO AI Overviews study.

Query Fan-Out Collapses the Buying Journey

We were taught that buyers move linearly — awareness, consideration, decision — and have long optimized content for each stage.

With AI, those stages collapse into one.

A single high-intent question triggers the system to fan out.

It pulls awareness-level context, consideration-level comparisons, and decision-level specifics into one answer.

The entire buying journey can now happen in a single interaction. So your content needs to work across the full funnel, not just the stage you’re targeting.

Pro tip: Want to work through these steps as you read? Our free Query Fan-Out Audit Template has spreadsheets for tracking your money prompts, sub-queries, intent buckets, and content gaps — plus a checklist to keep the full workflow on track.

The Query Fan-Out Workflow: 6 Steps to Earn More AI Citations

This six-step workflow shows you how to earn more AI citations by identifying and targeting high-impact sub-queries.

It’s repeatable, so you can follow these steps for every topic that matters to your business.

Note: Each AI platform handles fan-out differently, from the number of sub-queries it runs to how it cites sources. We cover the platform differences in depth after the workflow.

Step 1: Find Your Money Prompts

Money prompts are the conversational phrases or questions your ideal customer would ask an AI tool when trying to solve the problem your product or service addresses.

Money prompts are:

• Typically long-tail and highly specific
• Tied to a real use case or constraint
• Close to a decision, not just browsing

Think of money prompts as the AI SEO equivalent of money keywords: high-commercial-intent keywords designed to drive sales.

For example, “noise-canceling headphones ” is a keyword.

“What noise-canceling headphones are best for working from home with kids around, and cost under $300?” is a money prompt.

Look for money prompts where your audience asks questions:

• Customer support tickets
• Community forums
• Sales call transcripts
• Internal chat logs
• Google Search Console queries

For example, when I searched for noise-canceling headphones on Reddit, I found multiple money prompts in real users’ posts.

Like this one that asks for the best noise-canceling headphones for telehealth:

And this one asking for durable headphones that will last longer than 2 years:

Forums and transcripts are a good starting point. But you’ll need a dedicated tool to find money prompts using real AI search data.

Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit tells you exactly what users type into AI tools, along with the AI’s response.

To show you how it works, I’ll use Bose, a well-known headphone brand, as an example.

Note: I’ll be using Semrush to show you how to complete the query fan-out workflow. If you don’t have a subscription, sign up for a free trial of Semrush One, which includes the AI Visibility Toolkit and Semrush Pro.

First, I searched Bose’s domain in the Visibility Overview tool.

The “Topics & Sources” report revealed over 123.7K prompts where the brand already appears in AI answers.

Filtering by “noise canceling” let me dig deeper into topic-specific money prompts like “noise-canceling headphones for sensory issues.”

Clicking the prompt provides a full breakdown: the AI’s response, every brand mentioned alongside yours, and the exact sources it cited.

Follow the same process for your own domain.

These prompts are your highest-priority money prompts — your audience is already searching them, and AI is already answering them.

Don’t have AI visibility yet? Use the Prompt Research tool.

Enter a broad topic to see the prompts that generate the most AI results in your industry.

As you find relevant prompts, add them to your spreadsheet.

Even a few money prompts give you enough to work with for the next step.

Step 2: Generate Your Fan-Out Set

There are two ways to generate fan-out sets: manually or with a dedicated fan-out tool.

The manual approach is free and helps you understand how fan-out behaves, while tools are faster and better suited to working at scale.

I’ll start with the manual method.

Paste this prompt template into any AI platform to get a fan-out set:

Expand this question into the sub-queries an AI system might search to answer it: [your money prompt].

When I ran my Reddit money prompt through ChatGPT, it returned sub-queries grouped into categories:

• “Core Product Category”
• “Durability & Longevity”
• “Battery & Hardware Lifespan”
• “Reliability & Failure Rates”

Each category is a potential content gap you’ll address in Step 4.

Run your money prompt through multiple AI tools to get a more complete picture, since each platform tends to expand prompts differently.

Pro tip: Manual research is a solid starting point, but outputs can contain inaccuracies or hallucinations. A dedicated fan-out tool simulates how different AI platforms expand your query and returns an organized list of sub-queries you can act on immediately.

For a faster option, Backlinko’s free ChatGPT Query Fan-Out Tool is worth trying.

Install the Chrome extension, open ChatGPT, and ask your money prompt. The extension captures the response in real time and breaks down every sub-query ChatGPT ran behind the scenes.

When I ran a prompt through it, the panel showed:

• Each sub-query the model generated
• The metadata behind the response, including model version
• Every URL cited, categorized by type: sources, products, images, and news

As you gather sub-queries, assign a query type to each — this tells you what kind of content you’ll need to create in the next step.

Use these definitions to categorize them.

Step 3: Bucket Sub-Queries by Intent Type

Bucketing by intent tells you what types of content to create and the ideal format for each.

To categorize a sub-query, answer this question: What does the person actually want to do after getting an answer?

Consider an example from the noise-canceling headphones query fan-out set: “Sony vs Bose Noise Canceling Headphones.”

Someone asking this is weighing two specific products against each other, so it’s a “comparison” query.

The right format for this query is a head-to-head comparison page or table, not a general buying guide or listicle.

The intent isn’t always this obvious, and some sub-queries may fit more than one bucket.

When that happens, place it where the strongest intent lies.

Here’s a general guide to the main intent buckets and what each one calls for:

Step 4: Audit Your Existing Content for Gaps

Once you’ve bucketed your sub-queries by intent and format, check which ones your site already covers and which ones it doesn’t (aka content gaps).

Start by searching your own site.

Type “site:yourdomain.com [sub-query topic]” into Google.

For example, running “site:bose.com noise canceling headphones” surfaces all their pages on that topic.

From here, evaluate each page against the sub-query it should cover:

• Coverage: Does it directly answer the sub-query, or just mention the topic in passing?
• Format: Is it the right content format for the intent?
• Self-contained answers: Can the answer stand on its own, without the reader needing to look anywhere else?

Categorize each page by its coverage level:

For each sub-query, you’ll also want to know which competitors are showing up for your money prompts.

Run your money prompts through AI platforms to gather this information manually. Or refer back to your research from the AI Visibility Toolkit in Step 1.

Click any prompt to see which brands were mentioned and the exact sources the AI cited.

Already showing up alongside competitors? That’s a prompt worth protecting — focus on strengthening your coverage so you stay in the answer.

If competitors are showing up and you’re not, that’s a gap worth closing before they own it.

Step 5: Structure Your Content So AI Can Extract It

Creating the right content is only half the job. The other half is making it easy for AI to find, parse, and use.

Start by filling the gaps you identified in Step 4.

For sub-queries with no coverage, create dedicated pages or sections that target them directly.

For partial coverage, add self-contained answers to existing pages that resolve the sub-query without needing surrounding context.

Then, structure everything so AI can extract it cleanly:

• Address specific questions directly — lead with the answer, not background context
• Use content chunking: Break content into focused sections with clear headings, short paragraphs, and bullet points
• Front-load key information early in the page or section
• Use clear, precise language, including specific product names, figures, and use-case-specific wording
• Add FAQ sections

Here’s what this looks like in action.

Bose has over 63.9K mentions across AI platforms in the U.S. alone:

It helps that they’re a household name. But their content is also built to be extracted.

Their product pages front-load specific claims as scannable elements — “24 hours of battery life” and “legendary noise cancelation” — rather than burying them in copy.

Key specs are organized into structured comparison tables:

And they build dedicated landing pages for use cases like flying, using descriptive, scenario-specific language.

This matters because AI fans out into use-case-specific sub-queries.

When I searched “best noise-canceling headphones for flight anxiety,” AI Mode recommended Bose, using nearly identical language from Bose’s flight landing page.

When a user’s prompt matches the scenario your page was built for, AI systems may be more likely to pull from it.

This is a clear example of that in action.

You don’t need a complete site overhaul to make this work.

Even restructuring a few high-priority pages to address your fan-out gaps can improve your chances of being extracted and cited.

Step 6: Measure Your Performance in AI Search

Once your content is structured and live, track your performance in LLMs.

Start with the money prompts you identified in Step 1.

For each one, you want to know:

• Are you showing up? Is your brand mentioned or recommended in the response?
• Is what it says accurate? Are the claims the AI makes about your brand correct, or is it pulling outdated or wrong information?
• How do you compare? Which competitors appear in the same response, and how are they positioned relative to you?

If you’re tracking manually, run them through multiple LLMs (in a private or incognito window) and record what you find.

But once you’re tracking dozens of sub-queries across platforms, manually tracking gets messy (and time-consuming).

I use Semrush’s Prompt Tracker to automate the process.

It alerts you to changes in mentions for your money prompts, so you don’t have to keep re-running them yourself.

Another helpful tool is the Visibility Overview.

It provides an AI visibility score that tracks how often you’re showing up in AI answers compared to competitors.

The Perception tool tracks sentiment so you know how LLMs describe your brand — and if they mention competitors more favorably.

It also breaks down the factors driving that sentiment.

For Bose, “industry-leading noise cancellation” shows up as a strength, while “over-the-ear models not sweatproof” flags a use-case they could address with targeted content.

Tracking should be an ongoing process.

Revisit your money prompts regularly and update your content as new sub-queries emerge or competitors gain ground.

How Query Fan-Out Works Across Different Platforms

How content surfaces in an AI answer depends on several factors:

• Whether the system searches the live web or draws from its training knowledge
• How many sub-queries it runs
• Which sources it favors, and how it cites them

Understanding those patterns helps you make smarter decisions about content structure, format, and where to focus your optimization effort.

Plus, if a competitor outperforms you in a specific LLM, understanding how that platform handles fan-out can help you figure out why.

Note: Some of the behavior described below is based on how each system describes its own reasoning when prompted. LLMs aren’t always reliable narrators of their own processes, so treat these observations as directional rather than definitive.

ChatGPT

For simple, informational queries, ChatGPT usually responds from its training data without running a live search.

But that changes when the question requires fresh information, comparisons, or real-world data.

When I asked which car I should buy (Toyota vs. Honda) in Thinking mode, ChatGPT spent about 22 seconds reasoning through the question.

Then, it produced an answer drawn from 41 cited sources

That’s query fan-out in action: one prompt, varied sources, and multiple sub-queries running behind the scenes.

By default, you can’t see the sub-queries ChatGPT runs. But I’ll show you how to find them (don’t worry — it’s easier than it looks).

Note: This DevTools method only works in the web version of ChatGPT. You can’t access sub-query data on mobile or in the desktop app.

First, search a money prompt in ChatGPT.

Then, look at your browser’s address bar and copy the slug that appears after chatgpt.com/c/ — that’s the unique ID for your conversation

Next, right-click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect.”

A developer panel will open on the side of your screen:

• Click “Network” at the top of that panel
• Paste the slug you copied into the filter bar
• Refresh the page

Click on the fetch version of the slug (here, it’s the second option under the Name column).

Then, open the Response tab.

Once it loads, press Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F on Mac) and search for the word “queries.”

What appears is the exact set of internal searches ChatGPT ran before producing its answer.

For the Toyota vs Honda prompt, ChatGPT generated queries around:

• Vehicle specifications
• Fuel economy
• Reliability
• Safety ratings
• Long-term ownership costs

Once you have the sub-queries, cross-reference them against your content.

Are you targeting each one? Do your pages use the same language ChatGPT is searching for — “long-term ownership costs” rather than just “value”?

ChatGPT often pulls from third-party sources like Reddit threads, review sites, and comparison pages.

So topical authority matters here — not just what’s on your site, but whether your brand shows up across the sources ChatGPT is likely to retrieve.

Perplexity

Perplexity runs two types of fan-out simultaneously:

1. Internal fan-out — scans your prior conversation history for relevant context
2. External fan-out — searches the external web for relevant information

The final answer draws on both layers, which means your content needs to work for a range of user situations, not just one.

For the Toyota vs. Honda question, Perplexity’s first batch of sub-queries had nothing to do with the cars.

Instead, it checked whether I’d previously mentioned anything that could shape its recommendation.

Like budget constraints, driving habits, or past questions about either brand.

Only after that internal scan did it launch external searches about reliability, ownership cost, and safety ratings.

What this means for your content: Perplexity may pair your page with context you can’t predict: a user’s past questions, constraints, or preferences.

Your content needs to be specific and self-contained enough to remain accurate and useful no matter the surrounding context.

Claude

Claude takes a different approach.

Rather than immediately running sub-queries, it asks clarifying questions first. Then, it generates a response tailored to your answers.

When I asked the Toyota vs. Honda question, Claude presented a preference widget before producing an answer.

Once I responded, it generated a recommendation tailored to my priorities.

Because it clarifies intent before searching, Claude tends to generate fewer, more targeted fan-out sub-queries than other platforms.

The implication for your content: Answer specific, well-defined use cases directly rather than trying to cover every angle on a single page.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

AI Overviews appear as concise, AI-generated summaries with sources listed in a clickable sidebar.

They work by synthesizing Google’s existing web index into a tighter, more contained summary.

AI Mode, by contrast, is a dedicated conversational search tab designed for complex, multi‑part questions.

Like AI Overviews, it draws on Google’s index to generate answers, but it offers more interaction and depth.

Neither platform exposes the sub-queries it runs.

But SEOs have found a way to extract Google’s fan-outs using Screaming Frog configured with a Gemini API. Watch Dan Hinckley’s tutorial for a full walkthrough.

For both, the optimization focus is the same: Front-load your answers, use descriptive subheadings, and structure content so individual passages stand on their own.

AI Search Runs on Query Fan-Out — Your Content Strategy Should Too

High rankings alone won’t earn AI mentions.

The brands showing up are the ones covering the questions their audience is actually asking and making that content easy for AI to extract and cite.

You’ve got the query fan-out framework. Now it’s about execution.

Start with one money prompt, map the sub-queries, and audit where your content stands.

Then work through the gaps, one topic at a time.

Next, dive deeper into how to get your brand seen and trusted across AI platforms with our AI search strategy guide.

The post Query Fan-Out: What It Is and How It Affects AI Visibility appeared first on Backlinko.

2026-06-09 05:32:12

You can be a strong brand, publish high-quality content, and still not have topical authority.

Just look at Great Jones, a kitchenware company.

Their Dutch oven (called The Dutchess) is beautiful, well-reviewed, and featured in industry-leading sites like Vogue, the New York Times, Bon Appétit, and The Kitchn.

But search “best Dutch ovens” on Google or ask an LLM for recommendations, and the brand rarely appears.

It’s not that Great Jones lacks content or press.

What’s missing is the pattern — a consistent, positive framing that ties the brand to Dutch ovens across its own site and third parties.

Without this, search engines and large language models (LLMs) can’t confidently connect the brand to the topic, so they default to the names with stronger signals.

Many brands have some version of this gap. And AI search has only made it more visible.

The good news: You can build this pattern.

In this guide, I’ll show you how using the Topical Authority Pyramid, a framework I created to turn your brand into the go-to name in your niche.

This framework builds on conversations with Amanda Milligan, Content and Growth Manager at Semrush, and my work in brand positioning across ecommerce, SaaS, and finance.

What Is Topical Authority?

Topical authority is your site’s earned reputation for expertise on a specific subject. It forms when your brand and topic appear together repeatedly across the sources that buyers, search engines, and LLMs trust.

Think about the brands you automatically connect with certain topics.

Like these:

You didn’t consciously decide to make those associations.

They formed because those brands kept showing up with the same message, in the same spaces, around the same topic.

That’s topical authority — and it’s also how search engines and LLMs learn which brands are most strongly associated with a topic.

The Topical Authority Pyramid Framework

Topical authority has traditionally been defined by content volume and breadth of coverage.

Publish comprehensively on a subject, and you’d own it.

That’s no longer enough.

As Amanda explains:

The phrase “topical authority” has been around for a long time, but the thinking around it has evolved significantly. At its core, it’s always been about your brand becoming associated with specific topics. What’s changed is how we try to build that association.

Today, search engines and LLMs look for more than coverage. They look for a clear position on the topic and external evidence that supports it.

To address this, I created the Topical Authority Pyramid:

The Pyramid breaks topical authority into three layers:

• Foundational authority: On-site content and credibility signals that demonstrate experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), and category fit. (Think category pages, about pages, author bios, comparison content, FAQs, customer reviews, case studies, and more.) Still important, but not enough on its own.
• Point of view (POV-led authority): A specific, consistent angle that separates you from every other brand covering the same ground. It gives buyers a reason to choose you and AI systems the confidence to recommend you over competitors.
• Proof-backed authority: Third-party signals (mentions, reviews, citations, and data) that back up your POV across the wider web. It turns your POV from self-declared to independently verified.

Each layer works alongside the others to establish your brand as the expert in your niche and earn more visibility in search engines and LLMs.

Many brands, including Great Jones, have strong foundational authority and scattered proof, but no consistent POV tying it all together.

Here’s how to build all three.

Free resource: Download our free Topical Authority Audit template to audit your topics, score competitor authority, and track your progress. Fill it out as you work through each step below or at your own pace.

Step 1: Audit Your Topic Reputation

Your brand likely already has a topical reputation, whether you’ve shaped it intentionally or not.

Audit it before deciding what to build.

Research Your Current On-Site Associations

The gap between what you publish and what you want to be known for may be wider than you expect.

This is something Amanda has experienced firsthand:

When I did content audits, I’d inventory every piece of content by topic. You might find you have dozens of pieces on something that isn’t even your priority, and only five on the topic you actually want to own. That mismatch is exactly what a topic audit is designed to surface because what you’ve published is what you’re telling Google and buyers your priorities are.

The fastest way to assess this is with Semrush’s Organic Rankings tool.

Enter your domain to automatically see your brand’s strongest topic associations, organized by the topics getting visibility.

When I did this for Great Jones, their strongest topical associations were “recipes” and “celebrity chefs.”

Dutch ovens barely registered.

Yet, the Dutchess is their primary product.

And “Dutch oven” alone gets over 200,000 monthly Google searches.

Great Jones has a big opportunity to increase their topical authority for Dutch ovens and convert some of this search interest into sales.

These are the kind of topical association gaps you want to surface in this step.

Two more places to look:

• Google Search Console: Go to “Performance” > Queries and sort by clicks or impressions. You’ll see the topics that attract users to your site.
• Branded queries on Google and LLMs: Search “[your brand] + your topic” and “what is [your brand] known for” to see how search engines and LLMs describe you

Audit Your Off-Site Presence

Next, review your third-party coverage: mentions, reviews, roundups, and editorial press.

This is where many brands have the biggest gap, and it’s the one AI systems appear to weigh most heavily.

Run these checks:

• Search “[your brand] + [topic]” and look beyond your own site: What’s showing? Industry blogs? Reddit? Editorial coverage? Or nothing?
• Ask an LLM: “What are the best [topic] brands?” and “Where would you recommend buying [topic]?” See whether your brand surfaces and what it’s associated with.
• Check “best of” lists, roundups, and comparison articles for your topic: Are you in them? If so, where do you rank and how are you described? If not, who is?

A quick off-site audit for Great Jones showed me they’ve earned coverage any kitchenware brand would envy: features in major lifestyle publications and partnerships with prominent chefs and influencers.

But when you look specifically at Dutch oven coverage, the off-site gap is obvious.

Most of the top-ranking articles are a few years old (or older):

And the overall sentiment is inconsistent.

For example, in Food & Wine’s Dutch oven roundup, the Dutchess appears under the “Other” section (rather than “Top Picks”) with a caveat about heating issues.

In this Bon Appétit roundup of the best Dutch ovens, Great Jones is categorized under “Dutch ovens we don’t recommend.”

They’re also notably missing from some use-case roundups, like this one from Serious Eats:

In Reddit threads where buyers are actively looking for Dutch oven recommendations, Great Jones rarely comes up.

When it does, many of the threads are from years ago:

Great Jones has real brand equity to build on.

But it’s just not adding up to a solid reputation in Dutch ovens — yet.

Step 2: Choose the Topic You’ll Build Authority Around

You can’t build authority on everything at once.

This step narrows your focus to one topic worth owning based on a few crucial factors:

• What drives revenue
• Where competitors are weak
• Where your brand has room to claim a position

Build and Prioritize Your Topic List

Start by listing the topics you want buyers, search engines, and LLMs to associate with your brand.

Begin with the obvious ones: the products, categories, use cases, and problems you want to be known for.

Then expand with adjacent topics buyers already care about.

For Great Jones, that might include slow cooking, one-pot meals, kitchen gifting, or cookware care.

Look especially for topics where you already have traction, competitors are weak, or your brand should be associated but currently isn’t.

Once you’ve identified 10 to 15 topics, add them to the “Topic Audit & Scoring” tab in your spreadsheet.

Next, narrow the list down.

Not every topic on your list is worth building a reputation around right now.

For each one, ask two questions:

Do you want to own it? Does it drive revenue, support a product you sell, or build a reputation that brings buyers to you?

How urgent is it?

• High: Directly tied to revenue and an opportunity you can act on now
• Medium: Tied to revenue, but the opportunity or timing isn’t right yet
• Low: Worth tracking but not acting on yet, or no direct business connection

You should end up with three to five high-priority topics to investigate next.

Run a Query Audit

Now test each shortlisted topic to see who already owns the space and where there’s room for your brand to carve out a position.

For each topic, run four queries on Google and LLMs:

As you run each query, note:

• Which formats show up most: editorial lists, reviews, Reddit threads, brand pages
• Whether AI systems name specific brands without being asked (unprompted)
• Whether community results show buyers asking for recommendations or comparing options

Record this in the “Query Audit” tab of your spreadsheet.

If a query shows buying intent but the top results barely address it, that’s a topical authority opportunity.

For example, when I search “Dutch ovens” and “best Dutch ovens,” the same brands consistently come up: Le Creuset, Staub, Lodge, and Caraway.

But rarely Great Jones.

And for “Dutch oven for gifting,” ChatGPT didn’t mention Great Jones at all.

Great Jones only appears when buyers already know to look for them.

More importantly, some topics, such as gifting, aesthetics, and non-toxic coating, are not clearly owned by any brand.

That’s where the opportunity is.

Score by Association Strength

After the Query Audit, score your presence on each topic against three competitors on a 0 to 3-point scale.

The score reflects your overall standing across the Topical Authority Pyramid: foundational, POV, and proof combined:

Note: This isn’t a precise measurement. Use your observations, priorities, and market knowledge to guide the score.

Score your brand first, then each competitor.

After your scoring is complete, look for high-priority topics where you scored a 1 or 2 and at least one competitor scored a 0 or 1.

Those are topics where buyer demand is real, you have some footing, and no competitor has locked it down — the conditions for a winnable position.

For Great Jones, “Dutch ovens for gifting” fits the pattern: high priority, room to claim it, and no clear leader.

By the end, you should have one topic to focus on.

• Have more than one? Choose the one closest to revenue or where the gap between your current and desired reputation is smallest.
• Have none? Go niche. Instead of “Dutch ovens,” try “enameled cast iron Dutch ovens.” A narrower topic is easier to own and still builds toward the bigger one.

Step 3: Identify Your Topic POV

You’ve identified one viable topic. Next, decide what reputation to build around it.

Your POV is the specific angle you own inside that space.

It’s what makes your brand distinct to buyers, search engines, and AI systems.

Like these brands — same topic, completely different associations:

Research What’s Already Owned

Before identifying your POV, map what dominant brands in your space are already known for.

These are the POVs to avoid. Going after any of them directly means competing for territory another brand has spent years building.

Start with your notes from the Query Audit. The patterns there tell you a lot about which competitors own what.

To go deeper, use the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit.

The Brand Performance tool tells you which associations your competitors are winning across AI-generated answers (and how your own brand compares).

For Great Jones, the obvious territories are taken:

• Le Creuset owns heritage
• Staub and All-Clad lean on professional-grade performance
• Lodge owns value

No brand has clearly claimed gifting Dutch ovens, visual appeal, or beginner cooking.

(Semrush shows Great Jones is leading on design, which gives them a head start.)

These gaps are where your POV lives.

Choose Your POV

Before committing to a POV, ask three questions:

• Does it drive revenue or connect to a product or service you sell?
• Can you defend the POV with what you already have — features, data, customer behavior, and/or expertise?
• Is the territory open across search and LLMs?

If a candidate fails any of the three, drop it. It won’t hold up once you start building proof around it.

For Great Jones, “gifting” passes all three questions.

People already buy Dutch ovens as gifts.

Customers already mention its “super attractive,” “modern,” and “beautiful” design in on-site reviews, which aligns perfectly with a gifting POV:

And no competitor has clearly made “gifting” their territory yet.

Write Your POV as One Sentence

Your POV should be easy to grasp and repeat.

Writing it as one sentence is the test. If you can’t, it’s likely not sharp enough yet.

For Great Jones, the POV could be:

• Gifting: Great Jones is the Dutch oven for the milestone moments: weddings, housewarmings, and “I want this to mean something” gifts
• Aesthetics: Great Jones is the Dutch oven you give when you want the gift to stay on the counter, not the cabinet
• Beginner: Great Jones is the Dutch oven that turns beginners into confident home cooks

Each POV targets a different buyer and a different reason to choose Dutch ovens.

Step 4: Map Your POV Proof Architecture

This step is where you plan your proof — the concrete evidence that backs up your POV — across your own site and the wider web.

You’re not building anything yet.

You’re mapping what proof you’ll need at each stage of the buyer journey, so you have a clear blueprint to follow.

Audit Your Proof Across the Buyer Journey

A POV without proof is just a claim.

To build credibility, you need evidence that backs up two things:

You belong in the category

You’re the go-to brand for the POV you’ve claimed

And you need to reinforce this at every stage of the buying journey with a different kind of proof:

To run your audit, go through each belief in the table and identify which proof assets you already have and which are missing.

Use the POV Proof Planner in your template to record your findings:

For Great Jones’s gifting POV, a quick proof audit surfaces:

• Consideration proof exists: The brand has features in the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and many others, but most aren’t connected to gifting or were published years ago
• Comparison proof is sparse: Some decision-stage proof tied to gifting exists for Great Jones, but it’s not consistent enough to increase AI recommendations

Step 5: Build Your On-Site Foundation

Before search engines and LLMs can associate your brand with your POV, you need to establish it on your site.

This step is about building that foundation: the hub and supporting pages where your topic, POV, and early proof signals all come together.

Create a Hub Page for Your POV

Your hub page is the central authority document for your POV.

It defines the topic, explains why it matters, and routes buyers to supporting pages that go deeper.

Side note: If you’ve built pillar pages and topic clusters before, this will feel familiar. The structure is similar, but the organizing principle is proof and belief, not coverage and keywords.

For Great Jones, that could be a “Dutch oven gifting guide.”

It would link to the Dutch oven product page and explain why Dutch ovens make exceptional gifts.

Supporting pages, such as gift basket ideas, a gifting FAQ, and a report on cookware gifting would also be linked.

If you’ve been publishing for a while, you may already have a page that can serve as the hub: a category page, a subcategory page, or an industry-specific landing page.

Build Supporting Pages

Supporting pages go deeper than the hub.

Each one proves a specific aspect of your POV at a specific stage of the buyer journey.

Go back to the proof assets you mapped in Step 4 — they tell you what you need to prove and at which stage.

Your supporting pages are how you do it.

For Great Jones, the comparison stage is a clear gap.

To convince buyers the Dutchess is a better gift than the alternatives, they need dedicated comparison pages, backed by awards, endorsements from leading industry sites and public figures, and head-to-head data.

Other supporting pages might include:

• Dutch oven gift basket ideas: What to pair it with and how to present it, backed by customer photos and a relevant publication feature
• Gifting FAQ: Sizing, monogramming, return policies, with real customer questions pulled from reviews
• The Gift-Worthy Dutch Oven Report: Proprietary survey data on how customers buy, give, and display the product

Pro tip: Strengthen your hub and cluster pages with on-site trust signals. Include author bios that show real niche experience in the topic, named expert sources or contributors, and an About or editorial page that clearly ties your brand and contributors to the category.

Identify what pages you need, and fill out the rest of the “On-Site Foundation Planner” tab in your template.

Structure Each Page for Readers and Machines

Lead with the most important information first — also known as the inverted pyramid.

It makes your pages easier for readers to scan and for machines to interpret.

Then, make sure each page has:

• Clear section headings: Labeled so readers and machines immediately understand what each section covers
• POV language: Reuse the same phrases and framing tied to your angle throughout
• Schema markup: Structured data that helps search engines and AI systems understand your content and context
• Semantic HTML: Proper use of HTML tags so machines can correctly interpret your page structure

Link Your Pages

Each hub and supporting page proves something on its own.

Link them together, and you create a proof system.

Follow these internal linking best practices:

• Link from the hub to your 5–10 most important supporting pages in the body. Not just in the nav, breadcrumbs, or footer.
• Link every supporting page back to the hub. Keep key pages within 2–3 clicks of each other.
• Use descriptive, relevant anchor text to help people and machines understand what the linked page is about

Step 6: Create an Off-Site Proof System

A strong POV and foundation won’t get you into AI answers if the association exists only on your site.

This is one of the biggest shifts in how topical authority works, as Amanda explains:

Topical authority isn’t just about what’s on your site anymore. You need third-party sources — coverage, mentions, appearances, even reviews — independently reinforcing the same association. If the only place your brand is tied to a topic is your own content, that’s often not enough to build the pattern that AI systems and search engines need to trust you on it.

This step reinforces your POV in the places buyers and AI systems already trust.

Start with One Signature Proof Point

A signature proof point is an original, specific story or finding about your topic.

Something others outside your brand would want to reference, share, or build on.

That could be:

• Proprietary data from your own sales, customer behavior, or research
• A trend you’ve spotted and named before anyone else
• A contrarian observation backed by evidence

For Great Jones and the gifting POV, the insight has to tie Dutch ovens to gifting.

They might pull data from their own sales — say, a 4x spike in Dutch oven purchases in the two weeks before Mother’s Day — and turn it into a “State of Mother’s Day Gift-Giving” report.

That report becomes a press pitch to lifestyle publications, a video on their YouTube channel, and a thread on Reddit’s r/gifts.

One insight, multiple placements, all reinforcing the same association: Great Jones = gifting.

To find yours, start with your proof assets from Step 4.

Look for patterns in your data, reviews, industry trends, or customer behavior.

Distribute Your Proof Point

Once you have a signature insight, decide where and how to distribute it.

There are four main buckets:

• Brand channels: Content you publish directly to audiences you’ve built: email newsletters, marketplaces, review sites, podcasts, social media, SMS or loyalty messaging, local profiles
• Community: Discussions in spaces your buyers already trust, such as Reddit, niche forums and industry groups, social media comments and communities
• Partners: Others who extend your reach into new audiences, including affiliates, influencers, retail partners, and integrations
• Earned: Third-party coverage you pitch but don’t control, such as media mentions, press features, user-generated content, and editorial placements

For each bucket, identify the specific publications, platforms, or communities where your insight is most relevant.

Not sure where to start?

Run a search on Google or an LLM related to your proof point and look at the sites that rank and the sources that get cited.

Those are the places worth showing up in. List them in the “Off-Site Proof Planner” tab of your template.

For Great Jones, some of that infrastructure is already in place.

They already have the social media following, media clout, and collaborations with names like cookbook author Molly Baz.

What they need is a focused distribution of insights around their gifting POV.

That might look like:

• Briefing partner creators on a gifting-specific collaboration, like pitching fresh coverage that ties the Molly Baz collab to gifting
• Pitching their Mother’s Day gifting sales data to lifestyle publications already covering Dutch ovens
• Reframing existing social content around the gifting angle

Related reading: LLM Seeding: A New SEO Strategy to Get Mentioned by LLMs

Step 7: Track Topical Authority Progress

You’ve built the full Topical Authority Pyramid.

Now check whether it’s starting to influence how search engines and LLMs describe your brand.

Use the “Progress Tracker” tab in your spreadsheet to record what you find at 30, 60, and 90-day intervals.

Foundational Layer: Are You Showing Up More?

Coverage tracking tells you whether your topical footprint is growing:

Go back to your Step 2 notes. How many of your four query types surfaced your brand unprompted? Run them again and compare.

Also monitor pages ranking for queries you didn’t directly target, and rising impressions for queries related to your topic.

For Great Jones, the baseline visibility was weak for many non-brand Dutch oven queries.

Showing up in two or three queries at 90 days — especially “Dutch ovens for gifting” — would be a real sign of progress.

Tools that help:

• Semrush’s Organic Rankings tool (the Topics report) for association trends
• Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit: The Visibility Overview tool to see whether your AI Visibility score and mention count are climbing, and Prompt Tracking to re-run your query set on a set cadence
• Google Search Console for impressions and queries by page
• Surfer SEO for coverage gaps

POV Layer: Are You Being Described Correctly?

The POV layer tracks language. Specifically, whether mentions of your brand are increasingly paired with your POV.

Run POV-specific prompts monthly and check the wording.

For Great Jones, that’s searches like “Dutch oven wedding gift” or “best Dutch oven to give as a gift.”

And when the Dutchess shows up in reviews, comparisons, and “best of” listicles, watch for the language around it.

Is it being called “a great house-warming gift,” “splurge-worthy,” or “the kind of gift that gets displayed”?

That’s the POV landing.

Tools that help:

• Brand24 to track web and social mentions
• Semrush’s Perception tool for sentiment trends, and Narrative Drivers for the attributes and phrases AI ties to your brand

Proof Layer: Are Others Confirming Your POV?

The proof layer tracks third-party confirmation.

Are media mentions, third-party pages, and niche communities backing up the POV you want to own?

Start with your proof point.

Are others citing or referencing it? That’s a signal your off-site distribution is working.

Then, go broader.

Run [Your Brand] + [POV] queries on Google and an LLM.

Check whether you’re appearing in more third-party sources associated with your POV.

Are buyers recommending you unprompted in Reddit or niche communities? Are your hub pages attracting links from relevant sites?

When your brand appears, is it being described in relation to your POV?

For Great Jones, that might be a gift guide naming the Dutchess as the go-to Dutch oven for wedding gifts.

Tools that help:

• Google Alerts for basic brand mention tracking, or Meltwater for a more robust option
• Semrush’s Competitor Research tool to surface sites citing competitors but not you, and Narrative Drivers for the Top Cited Domains shaping your topic

Build the Pattern That Wins in AI Search

Great Jones proves that great press and a great product aren’t enough for topical authority.

If search engines and LLMs don’t have clear associations attached to your brand, showing up online will be a struggle — no matter what Vogue thinks of you.

But that’s fixable.

The Topical Authority Pyramid gives you the framework:

• A strong foundation that proves you belong in the category
• A POV that makes you distinct
• Proof that backs it up across the web

Once your first topic takes shape, expand.

Follow the Topical Authority Pyramid for your next topic, claim more territory, and deepen your authority in adjacent spaces.

Do this well, and search engines and LLMs may just start recommending you by default.

Want a repeatable way to monitor your AI visibility over time? Our AI visibility audit guide walks you through it step by step.

The post How to Build Topical Authority in the AI Search Era (7 Steps) appeared first on Backlinko.

2026-05-27 04:56:06

PR and SEO used to be separate disciplines.

Now you can’t afford to keep them siloed.

Google and LLMs both rely on third-party signals — backlinks, brand mentions, expert commentary, and coverage in trusted publications — to decide which brands deserve visibility.

PR and SEO both generate those signals, but most teams still operate independently.

When they do collaborate, it’s usually to treat PR as a link-building opportunity rather than a real partnership.

This leaves authority on the table.

But the real gains happen when these teams operate as one.

In this article, you’ll learn a five-step playbook for turning PR and SEO into an always-on authority engine.

I also spoke with two digital PR experts about how they’re partnering with SEO to build more authority across search, media, and LLMs.

Free resource: Download our PR + SEO Outreach Planner to align pitching, prioritize outlets, and track results. It includes a pitch ownership guide for deciding who pitches what and when.

Step 1: Align PR and SEO Research

An always-on PR and SEO partnership starts with shared intelligence.

Without it, you get predictable gaps:

• Content that ranks but doesn’t earn media mentions or AI citations
• Coverage that builds awareness but doesn’t improve search visibility
• AI citations and media coverage that go to competitors because they published first

Use PR Insights to Identify Emerging Content Opportunities

The biggest authority wins don’t come from PR and SEO staying in their own lanes.

They come from each team sharing insights that shape angles, assets, and placements.

For PR, this could be:

A sudden spike in journalist inquiries or media coverage around a topic

A new phrase or framing gaining traction among industry voices

Recurring themes across newsletters, conferences, or trade publications

Britt Klontz, digital PR consultant and founder of Vada Communications, says the strongest results come when PR and SEO combine their strengths at the ideation stage:

The best collaborations with SEO happen when PR is brought in early, before an asset or campaign is completed. We used to ask, ‘Can PR promote this?’ Now we ask, ‘How do we build something together that will help with search, media, and brand visibility from the start?’

To facilitate this partnership, build a regular channel for PR to flag insights to SEO.

This could be a shared Slack channel, spreadsheet, or standing agenda item.

For example, when I was the editor of the Hootsuite Blog, our PR team notified us that LinkedIn was shutting down its “Elevate” feature and suggested we should write a blog post about it.

No search volume existed yet, but we created the content anyway.

The post started gaining backlinks and driving a surprising amount of demo requests almost immediately.

Months later, the search volume appeared. And our post ranked #1.

Today, it still ranks near the top of the SERPs for terms like “LinkedIn elevate alternatives.”

AI tools like Claude also use the blog post as a top source for relevant prompts:

That’s the power of PR and SEO sharing information and acting on it quickly.

Rankings, backlinks, and AI citations that would have gone to a competitor built lasting authority for Hootsuite instead.

Use SEO Insights to Inform Content Topics

SEO has signals PR can act on too, including which topics are heating up and editorial gaps.

When conducting keyword research for PR, SEO should flag two things:

• Informational gaps: Questions audiences are actively searching for, but no one is answering well yet
• Trending terms in your niche: Journalists are likely already interested, which gives PR a clear opening

That’s why Rola Tfaili, communications manager for North America at Xero, brings SEO into her process from the start:

I want SEO insights — like emerging search trends, keyword gaps, and audience intent — to directly shape our PR narratives and campaign angles from the outset, before content is developed.

Here’s how you can do the same.

Not all keyword tools show you trends over time, so I’ll use Semrush for this step.

Note: If you don’t have a subscription, sign up for a free trial of Semrush One, which includes Semrush Pro and the AI Visibility Toolkit.

Search any term in the Keyword Magic Tool and look at the “SERP Features” column.

Two features in particular signal strong PR potential:

• News and Top Stories: Google surfaces these for time-sensitive or trending queries — sometimes within 24–72 hours of a news event. If your topic triggers these features, journalists are actively covering it, and PR has an immediate opening.
• Discussions and Forums: This signals that audiences are seeking advice or firsthand experience on the topic, which is often a sign of unmet demand and/or increasing interest

Next, use the Keyword Overview tool’s 12-month trend graph to confirm whether a topic is gaining momentum, seasonal, or fading.

A consistently rising trend is your strongest signal — media interest is likely to be building as well.

Pro tip: Don’t overlook existing topics. A trending term you already own is a valuable opportunity. PR can pitch it to journalists as a timely angle, repurpose it into new formats, or use it as a hook for a broader campaign.

For LLMs, you need a tool like Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit that shows actual prompt data, not just search queries.

This gives you insight into the exact prompts your competitors are earning AI visibility for, but you aren’t.

Those gaps are worth flagging to PR, especially if competitors are being cited as authorities on topics your brand should own.

Use your shared doc or Slack channel to provide real-time insights, so neither team works from stale data.

Topics that show up in both PR’s emerging trends and SEO’s keyword data are your highest-priority opportunities.

Step 2: Collaborate on AI-Ready Assets

An AI-ready asset is built to be found, cited, and trusted by search engines and AI models (while being valuable to humans).

This is also called answer engine optimization (AEO), which is the process of creating and structuring content for AI systems.

It can include optimizations like:

• Headings that mirror how people search
• Front-loaded key stats, details, and definitions
• Sections that focus on one core idea
• Bullet lists and tables that make key information more extractable

When you combine PR’s distribution power with SEO’s technical expertise, you get assets that earn visibility across search, media, and LLMs.

Original Research and Reports

Original data has long helped brands earn backlinks — now, it helps you build AI visibility too.

A collaborative workflow for this asset would look something like this:

SEO identifies the topic based on search demand and content gaps, and PR validates whether the angle is pitchable and shapes the findings into quotable hooks.

Together, they design the study so it’s structured for citations, with a clear methodology, front-loaded stats, and branded visuals that are easy to share.

SEO content teams might be tempted to create this type of asset on their own, then ask PR to pitch it.

But Britt says if PR is involved earlier, they can help answer questions like:

• Is this a real story?
• Is there a sharper edge here?
• Do we need more reliable data?
• Is there a better hook that fits the time?
• Would it be more interesting if an expert gave their opinion?

That kind of information can make an asset more useful and impactful.

Pro tip: Give your asset a unique, branded name — like ‘The State of X Report’ or ‘The X Index.’ If journalists mention it without linking, people can still search for it and find you.

Don’t limit original data to a blog post.

High-value assets should have their own crawlable landing page — no gates, no PDF-only content.

Use the same URL each year for recurring assets to build authority. Then, link these pages to related content on your site (and vice versa).

This way, search engines and AI see your topical coverage as connected, not random.

Free Tools

Free tools that solve a specific pain point earn AI visibility, backlinks, and return visits long after launch.

This includes calculators, templates, checklists, and interactive assets.

The gap here is usually distribution.

SEO can build and optimize tools, but without PR’s contacts and timing, even the best ones can be limited by organic performance.

A strong hook helps, too.

Britt says an asset is easier to promote when it “blends search insights with something more personal, like proprietary data, a strong point of view, or a story angle that is relevant right now.”

The payoff is an asset that is reported on and shared widely across channels.

NerdWallet’s tariff calculator is a good example of this in action.

It launched as tariffs dominated headlines — and earned media coverage because of it.

Podcasts

A branded podcast can generate tons of coverage, review articles, and inclusion in “best podcasts on X topic” listicles.

Getting your experts on other podcasts is also valuable for building authority and visibility.

Third-party mentions get your brand and subject matter experts into the conversation, both in search engines and LLMs.

PR typically drives guest placements, but SEO can identify which shows already rank or get cited by AI for your target topics, so you’re pitching the ones that build the most authority.

Press Releases

When published on your site and optimized properly, press releases can become standalone, crawlable assets that increase your AI mentions.

In fact, press release citations in LLMs grew 5x between July and December 2025, according to Muck Rack.

To get the most out of press releases, both teams need to contribute.

Rola has seen the benefit of this collaboration firsthand:

For key assets like press releases, we integrate SEO insights early — before content is developed — and include SEO in the review process to ensure we’re maximizing visibility.

PR shapes the story and the hook. SEO makes sure the on-site version is crawlable, optimized, backed by citable data, and linked to related assets.

So the press release doesn’t just generate buzz, it feeds your broader authority.

Explainer Content

Explainers are easy-to-digest resources (usually articles or videos) that simplify complex topics or highlight key info about your brand.

They help journalists and LLMs write accurately and consistently about you — especially if your category is niche or complex.

SEO can use keyword and prompt data to identify the questions your explainers should answer and structure them so AI can parse and cite individual sections.

PR knows which questions journalists and analysts ask most often — and where the current gaps are in how your brand gets described.

The format can vary:

• One-page proof point packet with key stats and third-party validation that PR sends alongside pitches
• YouTube video with citable brand facts or product details
• Dedicated pressroom that organizes assets by category with founder bios and press releases

(Bonus points for all three.)

Step 3: Co-Build Your Third-Party Presence

Brands are 6.5x more likely to appear in AI answers through third-party signals than their own content, according to AirOps.

This means PR and SEO have a real opportunity to work together to build more visibility across search and LLMs.

Rola sees this as an important shift for PR teams:

When we align closely with SEO to ensure our key messages land in credible, third-party outlets, we’re not just generating press; we’re helping position the brand to appear in AI search platforms. That intersection between PR, SEO, and now AEO is where I think we’ll see the most measurable impact moving forward.

Expert Commentary

When your experts are quoted consistently — on your own site, social media, and in trusted publications — Google and LLMs begin to associate them (and your brand) with that topic.

The biggest coordination gap is knowing where to focus.

SEO has the data on which topics have the most search and AI demand — and which publications are already earning citations for them. PR knows which journalists and outlets are most receptive and what angles resonate.

Together, they can pinpoint the exact publications and topics where a placement will improve results for both teams.

Then shape the commentary accordingly.

Concrete, data-backed quotes with a specific stat or firsthand insight are far more citable than generic thought leadership — especially for AI, which favors specificity it can extract and serve directly in an answer.

Getting your experts quoted online is a strong start — but it works best when paired with the other authority-building sources below.

Further reading: 5 Best HARO Alternatives (Expert Review)

Review Sites and Forums

Review sites like G2, Yelp, Google Reviews, and Trustpilot are trusted by AI for the same reason they’re trusted by humans.

They aggregate specific, unbiased information about products from verified users.

And AI frequently cites them for product recommendations:

Reviews across multiple sites also strengthen your brand’s authority signals.

It gives AI detailed evidence of what category you belong in, your core features and pricing, and why you should be trusted.

Forums work similarly — AI pulls from Reddit threads and Quora answers when users ask for honest recommendations or firsthand experience.

Brands that show up authentically and positively in these conversations earn another layer of trust signals.

You can’t control these mentions, but consistently showing up as a helpful, knowledgeable voice in your category’s communities builds the kind of organic mentions AI models trust.

PR and SEO should jointly identify which review sites and forums matter most in your industry.

Keep review profiles current and monitor relevant forum conversations for opportunities to contribute genuinely.

Further reading: How to Build a Brand Subreddit: Full Setup Guide (+ Examples)

Wikipedia

A Wikipedia page gives Google and AI a neutral, third-party source of facts about your brand.

It also helps establish your brand as a recognized entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph.

It’s a common source for Google’s Knowledge Graph, and it’s baked into LLM training data.

But to qualify for a page, you need to meet Wikipedia’s Notability Criteria.

This includes having significant coverage in reliable, independent sources that address your brand directly and in detail.

PR can help you earn this kind of coverage by pitching stories about your company to journalists in reputable publications.

Once you have a page, you won’t be allowed to edit it directly, as Wikipedia’s rules prevent self-promotion.

But SEO can monitor the page for inaccuracies and flag corrections, and PR can handle reputation monitoring to keep the narrative positive.

Pro tip: Use the same brand name, category language, and positioning everywhere: across your website, social profiles, press releases, and review site listings. The more consistent your language, the more confidently AI and Google can categorize and recommend your brand.

Step 4: Unify Your Outreach Strategy

If PR and SEO know what — and to whom — each team is pitching, you avoid mixed messages and misaligned timing.

And your odds of a yes go up.

It doesn’t take much to fix. Just a shared source list, a strategy to split pitching, and a regular check-in to stay aligned.

Pro tip: Download our PR + SEO Outreach Planner to put the tips in this section into action.

Build a Shared Target Source List

SEO has a list of high-authority domains that show up in organic rankings and AI citations. PR has a list of journalists, analysts, creators, and publications that influence their category.

Merging these gives you a single view of every third-party source worth going after.

Build it as a shared spreadsheet with three columns:

• PR Sources
• SEO Sources
• AI Citation Sources

Then prioritize.

Any source that appears on more than one list goes to the top. It has double (or triple) the potential to impact your authority and visibility.

Pro tip: Update your list quarterly as sources can shift fast — especially in LLMs.

Create a shared pitch doc to go with your source list. Use PR’s standard pitch brief, or if one doesn’t exist, create one. Include headline stats, agreed-upon positioning language, and target URLs.

Whoever sends the final pitch customizes it to their contact. But using the shared pitch doc as a starting point ensures your basic story stays consistent.
Split Pitching by Strengths
Many high-priority pitches will need both PR and SEO to weigh in. But not all.

Divide the work of pitching based on what each team does best.

Generally, that means structured, technical placements for SEO and editorial, relationship-based placements for PR.

Your company may want to organize these tasks differently depending on industry or org structure, but here’s what I suggest:

Plan Pitching in Advance

Meet quarterly or monthly — whatever works for your schedules — to decide who is going to pitch what, to which outlets, and when.

This will help prioritize high-impact efforts and reduce accidental duplication of work.

Map outlets to objectives and target KPIs to determine ownership.

Every time you meet, review results from the last period. Prioritize more of what’s working and cut what isn’t.

Further reading: Journalist Outreach: 9 Steps to Earn High-Authority Links

Step 5: Report on PR and SEO Performance Together

PR and SEO usually track different metrics, like mentions and outlet quality vs. rankings and organic traffic.

The fix isn’t merging into a single dashboard.

It’s building a shared lens for evaluating what each asset actually did, no matter which team owns it.

Britt recommends that both teams agree on a shared set of questions to evaluate each asset:

• Did it get any attention?
• Did it get picked up by reliable sources?
• Did it help with search goals?
• Did it contribute to conversions?
• Did it have results that lasted longer than a short-term spike?

As Britt puts it:

The best shared work usually helps with more than one thing at a time, like visibility, authority, discoverability, and brand credibility.

Visibility: Did We Show Up in the Right Places?

Getting in front of your audience more often — and in the places they care about — is one of the main advantages of having PR and SEO collaborate.

Track these metrics to see if it’s working:

• Quality mentions in relevant outlets: Not raw mention count. A placement in a niche newsletter your buyers trust outweighs 10 mentions on unrelated blogs. PR likely already has a media monitoring tool for this.
• Recurring format mentions: Listicles, comparison posts, and “best of” roundups will continue to earn backlinks and AI citations over time. They also show how your brand is positioned relative to competitors. Track these separately in your media monitoring tool or a shared spreadsheet.
• Share of voice in category coverage: Report on the percentage of category coverage that mentions your brand vs. competitors. Free tools like Google Alerts and Mention’s share of voice calculator give you a general sense of how you’re doing. But paid media monitoring tools let you dig into specific platforms, outlet types, and topics.

For AI specifically, track how often your brand appears in AI answers for queries you care about.

You can manually check your top questions and prompts in LLMs to see if your brand is mentioned, but this gets tedious at scale.

The AI Visibility Toolkit is helpful here. It automates tracking so you’re not manually checking every LLM for every query.

You get an overall AI Visibility score for your brand, which measures how often you’re mentioned in AI systems compared to other brands.

The Competitor Research tool shows how your AI visibility stacks up against competitors, which is one of the clearest ways to show leadership whether you’re gaining or losing ground.

It also tracks your Share of Voice across AI platforms, a single metric that reflects the combined impact of your PR and SEO efforts.

Authority: Did We Become More Credible?

This is where you show if your brand is becoming a trusted source online.

Start by tracking new referring domains.

New backlinks matter too, but new domains are more meaningful because they represent more unique sources vouching for your brand.

Reporting on your website authority is also helpful. This is a third-party estimate of the level of trust search engines are likely to assign to your domain, based on your backlink profile and other signals.

Different SEO tools calculate it differently (and call it different things).

So, focus less on the score and more on the direction it moves over time.

Note: Meaningful changes to your Authority Score can take 3-6 months to appear.

The AI Visibility Toolkit tracks your mentions, citations, and cited pages over time, and tells you percentage increases and decreases.

When your authority score and AI mentions are both climbing, you’ll know your PR and SEO work is paying off.

Expert commentary placements, direct requests from journalists, and new journalist relationships are also worth tracking.

Increases in any of those areas are a strong signal that you’re gaining trust.

Google Alerts can catch mentions to help you track expert commentary placements, but a tool like Semrush’s Brand Monitoring gives you a more comprehensive picture.

It lets you track any query (SME names or other keywords) and provides:

• Total mentions
• Estimated reach
• Traffic
• Mentions with backlinks
• Sources (Social media, news, and blogs)

Demand: Did It Help People Take the Next Step?

Did improving visibility and authority have any impact on your business goals and revenue?

PR and SEO sometimes sit at the top of the funnel, so this can be tricky to answer.

Start with these metrics to prove demand:

• Referral traffic
• Assisted conversions
• Branded search lift

Track your referral traffic to show the number of visitors who visit your site directly from media coverage.

Even if numbers are low, they’ll tell you which topics make your audience want to know more about you. Then you can publish more on those in the future.

Tracking assisted conversions shows you conversions where organic search or referral traffic appeared somewhere in the buyer’s journey, but not necessarily as the last click.

PR and SEO content may not convert on the first visit, but it still influences the buyer’s journey.

This metric captures that concept.

Find this in GA4 under Advertising > Key event attribution paths, and switch to “Source/Medium” to see which specific outlets have the most impact.

As AI search has decreased click-through rates, branded search queries have become one of the clearest signals that your PR and SEO efforts are building real awareness.

It’s a metric Britt prioritizes for exactly this reason:

I track branded search lift because it’s a sign that coverage or visibility made someone curious enough to go look up the company by name. That matters to me because not every asset will result in direct clicks.

The metric is also important to Rola:

Branded search lift connects awareness and intent, showing how media exposure actually drives people to seek out your brand.

Google Search Console tells you how often people search for your brand by name and how many of those searches result in a click to your site.

Look for spikes around major coverage dates to directly tie increases to your PR and SEO efforts.

Turn PR and SEO Into an Always-On Authority Engine

The brands earning the most trust right now aren’t doing it with PR or SEO in siloes.

They’re showing up consistently across media, blogs, review sites, search engines, and AI because all of those channels feed the same authority signals.

That takes more than a “quick sync” before campaigns. It takes an always-on partnership.

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once.

Start small:

• Co-create one high-impact asset (and keep AEO best practices in mind)
• Merge your source lists
• Plan 3 pitches using our PR and SEO Joint Outreach Strategy Template

When you’re ready to go deeper on how to optimize your brand’s presence in AI, check out our complete guide to AI optimization.

The post PR and SEO: How to Build More Authority Together (5 Steps) appeared first on Backlinko.

2026-05-01 03:59:14

Your analytics dashboard tracks clicks, but it doesn’t convey the complete picture.

When a buyer reads an AI answer that mentions your competitor, or scrolls through a Reddit thread where your brand doesn’t appear, that’s lost visibility. And it won’t show up anywhere in your traffic data.

Share of voice (SoV) captures what traffic metrics can’t.

It measures your brand’s visibility against competitors across channels where buyers actually research and make decisions.

While SoV spans social, PR, and paid media, search is where most brands should start. It’s the channel where buyers with the strongest purchase intent show up, and it’s the easiest to measure competitively. That’s what this guide focuses on.

I’ll walk you through four steps to measure your share of voice in organic and AI search. Then, I’ll show you how to turn that data into decisions that move the needle where it matters.

What Is Share of Voice?

Share of voice measures your brand’s visibility relative to competitors across multiple marketing channels.

That includes organic and AI search, social media, review sites, communities, and more.

Traditionally, brands used SoV to track their share of ad spend in a market.

Now it’s evolved into something even more valuable. It can measure your brand’s presence across every touchpoint where buyers research and make decisions.

In simple terms: SoV tells you what percentage of the conversation you own in your category, compared to competitors.

This guide focuses on search SoV — both organic and AI — because that’s where buyer discovery is shifting fastest and where the measurement tools have matured enough to give you actionable data.

I find that search SoV also tends to be the foundation: once you understand your visibility in organic and AI results, layering in other channels becomes much simpler.

What Counts as a “Good” Share of Voice?

While there’s no universal benchmark for SoV, establishing one for your brand comes down to:

• Market position: Market leaders have a higher share of voice since they own the conversation. Challengers aim for a mid-range SoV when competing against players with decades of brand equity.
• Competitive context: In a fragmented market with 20+ active competitors, 8% SoV could put you in the top five. But in a three-player market, anything below 30% could mean you’re behind the leader.

Beyond these two factors, look at the broader market shifts within your category.

High SoV in a declining market can be a vanity metric. The real win is growing your share as the category grows.

How SoV Works in Traditional vs AI Search

Both SEO and AI SoV answer the same question: What percentage of category demand does your brand own?

But they measure different search contexts.

SEO SoV calculates your slice of traditional organic search traffic.

You track 100 target keywords. Those keywords generate 50,000 total monthly visits across all ranking sites. You capture 15,000 of those visits.

That’s 30% organic share of voice.

AI SoV measures brand mentions in LLM responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and similar tools.

For example, you test 100 category-related prompts. Your brand is mentioned in 45 responses and cited in 15. Your competitor shows up in 30 responses with 10 mentions.

An AI visibility tool can calculate your weighted AI SoV based on mentions and citations.

Try now: Curious to know how often your brand shows up in AI responses? Try our free AI visibility checker to find out.

Why Is Share of Voice So Important, Especially Now?

Here are three reasons why share of voice should be your core KPI when visibility is scattered across platforms.

Track Visibility Beyond Traditional Traffic Data

Your organic traffic data reveals only half the story.

And with zero-click searches on the rise, that half is shrinking fast.

When users get their answers directly from AI Overviews and featured snippets, a huge chunk of your visibility is never captured in Google Analytics.

This makes traffic a lagging indicator of visibility.

Share of voice is a better metric because it measures how visible you are in the consideration set, even when users don’t click your site.

Think of it this way:

A user searches for the “best project management software for remote teams.”

They see an AI Overview listing five tools, including yours. The user reads it, takes no action, and later signs up for a product demo on your site.

Traditional traffic data would show this as “direct traffic” since the person went straight to the website. It wouldn’t capture the discovery that occurred in Google.

But SoV reveals that your brand appeared in the consideration set for this high-intent query.

Work Toward One North Star Metric

Your marketing team might be operating in silos.

The SEO team wants more website visits. PR wants more media mentions. The social team wants better engagement.

Each team tracks its own KPIs and optimizes for different outcomes.

But the long-term power of SoV is that it can become the one metric every team rallies around.

When everyone sees how their work contributes to the same visibility percentage, it changes how teams collaborate.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

• SEO team targets specific keywords to boost traffic and visibility via content
• PR secures features in industry publications through expert quotes
• Social drives brand conversations on Reddit and LinkedIn
• Product wins better reviews on G2 and Capterra

This full picture takes time to build.

Start with the foundation by measuring your SoV in organic and AI search.

Once you have that baseline, you can layer in other channels over time.

Read more: How to Rank Higher (& Get More Visibility) on Google in 2026

How to Measure Share of Voice in 4 Steps

Let’s see how you can strategically calculate share of voice in four steps.

I’ll use a fictional project management software example to show how each step translates into business insights.

Step 1: Define Your Industry Landscape

Start by outlining the specific competitors and keywords you’ll track for SoV.

Without clear boundaries, you’ll either miss critical gaps or drown in too much noise.

To map your competitive terrain, pick topic clusters tied to revenue.

For a project management software, I picked these clusters:

• Category fundamentals (like “project management 101” and “project management for freelancers”)
• Use cases (like “agile project management” and “remote team collaboration”)
• Industry-specific (like “construction project management” and “marketing project management”)

Pro tip: Don’t pick these topics solely based on search volume. Choose clusters where gaining visibility directly impacts your bottom line.

One way to assess a topic’s revenue potential is to map it to funnel stages.

Categorize your clusters into three stages:

• Awareness: Where people are learning and researching, like how to manage projects
• Consideration: Where they’re exploring solutions, like the best project management software
• Decision: Where they’re comparing options and ready to buy, like Software A vs Software B

Your SoV at each stage tells you where you’re winning and losing in the buyer journey.

This allows you to allocate resources for maximum business impact.

Let’s say this project management software segments the SoV by funnel stage.

It reveals that most of the brand’s visibility is concentrated at the top with almost none at the decision stage.

That’s a problem.

They’re educating the market, but invisible when prospects are actually comparing options and reaching for their wallets.

Strategic takeaway: They need to prioritize comparison pages and case studies to shift visibility toward the decision stage.

Now, define who you’re measuring against.

In search, you’re competing for visibility against two key players:

• Direct competitors: Companies selling similar solutions like Asana, ClickUp, Notion, and Trello
• Indirect competitors: Review sites capturing the voice of the customer like G2 and industry publishers ranking for your keywords but not competing for customers like HubSpot and Zoho

Tracking them gives you the complete picture of who controls visibility in your market and where you can break through.

Step 2: Build Your Keyword & Prompt Libraries

Create a library of 200-500 queries that capture how people search in your category.

You need both keywords (what people search) and prompts (what people ask LLMs). Together, they reveal your search visibility spectrum.

Pull SEO Data First

Collect queries where you’re already visible to your audience.

Google Search Console (GSC) is a good starting point for this since it captures actual visibility through impressions.

Impressions show every time your brand appears in results, even when users don’t click.

Go to the “Queries” tab in the “Performance” report.

Click the “Impressions” column header to sort in descending order, and export this list of keywords.

And if you’re running Google Ads, export your PPC keyword list and filter for terms with conversions or high CTR.

You can also repeat this process with tools like Semrush.

Open your Semrush Position Tracking project (or create one for your domain).

Scroll down to the “Top Keywords” section and click the “View all” button.

Adjust the timeline to your preferred range before clicking “Export” to download the full keyword list.

Pro tip: Export all tracked keywords, not just the top money terms. A keyword with 20 monthly searches might seem irrelevant in isolation. But 50 of these collectively represent meaningful category visibility that SoV captures.

Layer in Competitor Intelligence

Besides your own data, track where competitors show up.

This tells you where to compete directly and where to claim ground that they’ve overlooked.

You can use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to find these opportunities.

Add your domain along with up to four competitors, then hit “Compare.”

Filter to the “Missing” section to find keywords with proven search demand that competitors have validated.

You need to build visibility for these terms.

For example, this project management tool could target keywords like “Gantt chart” and “project management software” to boost its SoV.

Dig deeper: How to Run a Competitor Traffic Analysis (9 Steps)

Build Your AI Prompt Library

After sourcing keywords, look at how people search for your category in AI tools.

Since AI search queries tend to be more conversational, they often mirror how people talk in community spaces.

Browse Reddit, Facebook groups, and Slack communities to see how your audience phrases their needs and pain points.

For example, this post reveals that agencies want project management tools that aren’t “too corporate or complex for creative teams.”

A question like that can translate directly into an AI prompt: “What’s the most user-friendly project management tool for small creative agencies?”

For decision-stage prompts, review sites G2 and Capterra (or those relevant to your industry) offer a lot of insights.

G2, for instance, lists popular alternatives for every tool.

This is a ready-made list of “[You] vs [Competitor]” and “alternative to [Competitor]” queries your buyers are likely running in AI search.

You can dig deeper with Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit to find prompts where competitors show up in AI answers, but you don’t.

Go to “Prompt Research” and add any of your core topics, like “agile project management.”

Click “Analyze” to get started.

The tool lists real prompts that generate AI responses for your category, such as “best productivity app” and “companies that use agile software development.”

Jot down the prompts relevant to your primary cluster.

Then, repeat for each of your 3-5 clusters.

Document Your Metadata

Finally, organize everything in a master spreadsheet with columns for:

• Keyword/Prompt
• Topic Cluster
• Funnel Stage
• Source (SEO/AI)

Once you’re done measuring SoV, this metadata will become your strategic lens.

Use it to decide which clusters to prioritize, which funnel stages are weak, and where SEO and AI visibility diverge.

Here’s what this looks like for the project management software:

Step 3: Calculate Your SoV

Your SoV equals your estimated traffic divided by the total traffic for all tracked brands, multiplied by 100.

Track both SEO and AI SoV to see the full picture of your brand’s visibility.

Calculate SEO Share of Voice

Start by checking your rankings for all the keywords in your tracking list. Track your competitors’ rankings for the same keyword set.

Each ranking position gets an average share of clicks, like position 1 getting roughly 27%.

This will help in estimating the traffic share per keyword.

Note: These benchmarks for organic search CTR shift over time. It’s also crucial to mention that organic CTRs have been declining as AI-generated answers absorb more clicks before users ever reach the results.

Multiply each keyword’s monthly search volume by the click-through rate for your ranking position to estimate your traffic for that duration.

Then, run the same calculation for each competitor.

Use this data to calculate your SoV.

Add up the estimated traffic across all keywords for each brand. Divide your total by the combined total for all tracked brands and multiply by 100.

This manual approach can be time-intensive, especially when tracking hundreds of keywords across multiple competitors.

Semrush handles this math automatically once you set up tracking correctly.

Go to Semrush Position Tracking and click “Create project.”

Enter your domain, target search engine, device type, and location.

The location setting matters for SoV tracking because search results vary by location.

If you set the location to the United States, but most of your customers are in New York, your SoV might look different than reality.

Pro tip: Start with country-level tracking to establish your baseline. Only segment by region later if local variations impact your business.

Then, click “Continue to Keywords” to manually add or import your keyword list.

Upload the CSV you made in Step 2 to preserve the data by cluster and funnel-stage categorization.

Then, press “Add keywords to campaign.”

Finally, click “Start Tracking” to begin data collection.

Once this setup is complete, Semrush starts collecting daily ranking data for every target keyword.

Check out the results in the “Share of Voice” tab under “Overview” in the Position Tracking dashboard.

You can also add up to four domains to see how you fare against others in the market.

Semrush tracks every brand’s rankings for your keyword set to aggregate the data into SoV percentages.

Important: While SoV is inherently relative and compares your visibility against others, who you choose as competitors shapes how you interpret your SoV.

Calculate AI Share of Voice

Your AI SoV shows how often LLMs cite your brand when answering questions in your category.

There’s no standardized way to manually measure AI SoV yet, but this two-step process gets you close:

• Step 1: Run each prompt from your library through your AI tools of choice, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Mode, and any other AI tools your audience uses
• Step 2: For each response, document every brand that appears — yours and your tracked competitors. Record whether each brand was mentioned, cited as a source, and whether the sentiment was positive, neutral, or negative.

Once you’ve tested all prompts, count how many times each brand appeared across all responses.

Divide each brand’s total mentions by the total number of prompts tested, and multiply by 100.

Keep in mind: This calculation gives you a directional read instead of a live metric. AI responses vary by session, phrasing, location, and platform. That’s why it’s important to test regularly and track trends over time.

Measuring AI SoV manually for 20 prompts across three platforms is doable. Doing it for hundreds of prompts while tracking how recommendations shift week over week isn’t.

That’s what Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit is built for.

Go to the Brand Performance report in Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit.

Enter your domain and click “Analyze.”

Pick an AI platform between ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, or Perplexity.

Switch among these tools to identify any significant gaps in platform-specific LLM visibility.

Once the report is generated, you’ll see a pie chart visualizing the distribution of SoV for your competitors.

The tool tests hundreds of prompts related to your category across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity to measure your AI SoV.

For each prompt, it analyzes AI responses for:

• Brand mentions: How often your brand appears in the answer
• Citations: Whether the AI links to your content as a source
• Context: Whether mentions are positive, neutral, or negative

It aggregates this data across all tested prompts to calculate your percentage of total visibility.

You’ll also find a section comparing each competitor against a set of business drivers specific to your industry.

These drivers are the most frequently mentioned topics for your category.

Use this data to identify clusters where you’re stronger and weaker than your competitors.

Interpreting SEO vs AI Share of Voice

SEO share of voice measures organic traffic while AI share of voice tracks LLM mentions and citations.

These might not always align.

You can have a strong organic share of voice (ranking on top for many keywords) but a weak AI SoV if LLMs don’t find your content credible.

And brands with more credible content can win a bigger slice of AI SoV even without much visibility in organic search.

Here’s a simple matrix to understand your data:

Dig deeper: Learn more about building visibility in AI search with LLM seeding.

Step 4: Establish Your Baseline and Track Trends

The final step is turning your SoV numbers into an ongoing tracking system that informs decisions.

Create a baseline dashboard to capture three levels of detail:

• Overall metrics: Are you gaining or losing ground overall?
• Topic cluster performance: Which topics need more investment?
• Funnel stage breakdown: Where in the buyer journey are you least visible?

Here’s what this could look like for the project management software:

Once your baseline is locked in, set your tracking cadence strategically.

A monthly frequency allows you to spot trends without the need for reacting to noise.

With quarterly deep dives, you can:

• Analyze cluster-specific performance in detail
• Correlate SoV changes with past campaigns
• Adjust resource allocation based on what’s working

This rhythm prevents you from chasing short-term variations and missing critical shifts that impact your category.

Pro tip: Set up notifications in Semrush Position Tracking to get real-time alerts. You’re notified when SoV drops more than a certain threshold in any core cluster.

How to Improve Share of Voice

Not every fluctuation in your SoV requires action.

Here’s how to strategically diagnose gaps in your SoV and prioritize the right tactics to fix them.

1. Close Visibility Gaps

Clusters with <10% SoV mean you’re almost invisible.

This is especially damaging in decision-stage queries.

If you have less than 10% visibility when buyers search “best project management software,” you’re not in their consideration set.

At the same time, look for opportunities where competitors dominate, but you can compete.

For example, if your project management tool serves creative agencies but you have zero visibility for “project management for creative teams,” that’s your opening.

Potential Solutions

Diagnose the cause:

• Search your weak clusters and compare what ranks against what you have
• Check if you lack topic coverage, content depth, or basic optimization
• Look at which competitors dominate and what formats they use

Build topical authority for major business themes.

Create one pillar page with multiple supporting articles.

Build backlinks to your pillar content to establish visibility across every query in that cluster.

For example, if we learn that the project management software needs to gain decision-stage visibility, we could prioritize comparison content.

Build pages targeting “[Your Brand] vs [Competitor]” and category buyer’s guides.

2. Solve Efficiency Problems

Compare your SoV to actual traffic.

A cluster like “what is project management” might give you a high SoV.

But if only 1% of that traffic converts, you’re likely burning money on the wrong audience.

You’re winning visibility in areas that don’t drive business outcomes. And competitors are capturing high-intent buyers.

Potential Solutions

Diagnose the cause:

• Check if you’re ranking for awareness content when you need decision-stage visibility
• Look at your traffic-to-conversion ratio by cluster
• Identify if your content attracts the wrong audience (students vs. buyers)

Reallocate resources to high-intent clusters.

Instead of producing more awareness content, shift the budget to bottom-of-funnel content.

This includes comparison pages, case studies, and ROI calculators that target buyers ready to evaluate solutions.

Update existing comparison pages with current data and competitive intelligence.

3. Address Competitive Threats

Keep tabs on competitors gaining ground in your strong clusters.

If a competitor gains over 5% SoV in your strong clusters, it’s an early sign that they’re targeting your territory.

That gap can widen unless you respond to maintain your market share.

Diagnose the cause:

• Analyze what new content or tactics they launched
• Check if they’re winning on review sites, community platforms, or organic search
• Identify if they’re capturing a format you’re missing (video, podcasts, tools)

The fix depends on where your competitors are winning.

If competitors actively feature on review sites, optimize your profiles. Run campaigns to source reviews from happy customers.

If they’re visible on community platforms, proactively engage in communities like Reddit and Slack.

Prioritize Based on Effort vs. Impact

Not all gaps matter equally.

Focus on opportunities that will actually move your revenue pipeline.

Start with high-impact, low-effort wins. Then invest in high-effort moves that compound over time.

Making SoV Your 2026 North Star

Share of voice captures how often you show up across the fragmented platforms where buyers make decisions.

Get started by measuring your current SoV across SEO and AI search with the steps in this guide.

Pick the gap that costs you the most revenue, and strategize the best ways to close it.

Next step: Build your AI optimization gameplan to capture visibility in the fastest-growing search channel.

The post How to Calculate Share of Voice (+ Why it Matters for SEO) appeared first on Backlinko.

2026-04-30 15:00:41

SEO services have evolved significantly in recent years, driven by changes in search behavior, AI-powered results, and rising competition across industries.

To give you the most accurate picture of the industry today, we’ve combined data from multiple sources, including our survey of 1,200 business owners.

In this report, you’ll learn:

• How much businesses spend on SEO services today
• Where companies actually find and hire SEO providers
• What factors influence the decision to choose one agency over another
• Why clients leave (or stay with) their SEO provider
• Key trends shaping the future of SEO services

Let’s dive into the data.

Highlights and Key Statistics:

1. Companies spend $119.4 billion on SEO and digital marketing consulting each year in the US.

2. We found a strong correlation between higher spending and higher client satisfaction in small business SEO. In fact, clients who spent over $500/month were 53.3% more likely to be “extremely satisfied” compared to those who spent less than $500/month.

3. Most small business owners find SEO providers through referrals, Google searches, and online reviews. A small fraction of SEO clients (8%) found their current provider from online advertising.

4. When it comes to choosing a provider, 74% of business owners consider an SEO provider’s reputation “very” or “extremely” important. Monthly cost and the provider’s own Google rankings were also noted as important factors.

5. Overall, SEO client satisfaction is decidedly low. Only 30% would recommend their current SEO provider to a friend or colleague. However, we found that client satisfaction among marketing agencies was higher than that of freelancers.

6. SEO provider turnover is high. 65% of our panel stated that they’ve worked with several different SEO providers. 25% have worked with 3 or more providers.

We have more detailed and expanded findings below.

Average Monthly SEO Spend

In 2025, US organizations spent $119.4 billion on SEO and digital marketing consulting.

Our 2019 research found that small businesses spend $497.16 per month on SEO services.

However, we did discover a large range in SEO spending. Half of our respondents reported spending less than $1,000 per year on SEO. 14% spend $5k+ per year. Only 2% spend over $25k/year.

We also found that agencies tend to get paid significantly more than freelance SEO providers.

Specifically, agencies were 2x more likely to get paid $1k-$2k/month than freelancers, who mostly get paid in the $500-$1k per month range.

Agencies also tend to dominate the high-end pricing range (clients that spend $10k-$25k/year on SEO).

As you can see, 24% of small businesses that work with agencies spend between $10k-$25k/year, compared with 2% that work with a freelance SEO.

Sources: Infinite, Backlinko

Monthly Spend Is Tied To Client Satisfaction

When it comes to SEO, do you “get what you pay for”?

According to our data, yes.

Specifically, we discovered that clients spending over $500/month were 53.3% more likely to consider themselves “extremely satisfied” compared to people who spend less than $500/month.

We also found a clear relationship between dissatisfaction levels and cost.

Specifically, business owners who spent less than $500/month were 75% more likely to be dissatisfied than those who invested at least $500/month in SEO.

This relationship played out whether a client worked with a freelancer, agency, or a mix of both.

Source: Backlinko

Referrals and Google Searches Are the Top Ways Businesses Are Finding SEOs

When someone wants to hire an SEO agency, where do they look?

According to our panel, most people find potential SEO service providers through word of mouth, Google searches, and online review platforms (like Yelp).

On the other hand, relatively few find SEO providers through online or offline advertising, or referrals from other vendors (like web designers or writers).

If you’re an agency owner or a freelancer, this is a key finding. If you know where small business owners look to find SEO service providers, you can invest resources to make sure your business has a presence in those places.

Sources: Backlinko

Reputation and Cost are Key Factors Involved In Choosing a Provider

Demand for SEO services continues to grow as search becomes more complex and harder to manage in-house. 

In fact, recent data shows that 61% of companies hire SEO agencies due to a lack of internal expertise, while others turn to external providers when they don’t have the time, resources, or results needed to scale.

Most common reasons for using SEO services:

• Lack expertise – 26.87% 
• Lack resources – 22.70% 
• More cost-effective – 21.48%
• Poor in-house SEO results – 15.48%
• Lack sufficient time – 10.70%

But hiring an agency isn’t just about capability. Once someone finds a list of potential providers, how do they decide which one to go with?

We discovered that reputation, cost, and a provider’s own Google rankings influenced their decision the most.

Small business owners cited client case studies and the provider’s social media presence as significantly less important.

However, even these relatively minor factors played a role in whether or not someone decided to work with a particular SEO provider. For example, 55% of our panel cited “referrals” as an important consideration.

Although the importance of referrals pales in comparison to a provider’s reputation (55% vs. 74%), it’s still something that influenced more than half of the people we spoke to.

Interestingly, we found that a provider’s location mattered quite a bit.

Only 51% knew exactly where their SEO provider was located.

However, 78% of US-based small businesses stated that knowing their provider’s location was “extremely” or “very” important (with 46% stating that a known location was “extremely important”).

If you provide SEO services, making your location clear and obvious may help you land more SEO clients.

Here’s a great example from Siege Media, which actually includes a picture of their office on their about page:

Sources: Leading Edge, Backlinko

The Vast Majority of Business Owners Expect SEO Services To Increase Customers and Traffic

A recent 2025 survey found that 91% of people who used SEO services reported a positive impact on website performance and marketing goals.

As such, it’s no surprise that expectations are high when working with an SEO provider.

According to our survey, the most important expectations are “accessing new customers”, “increasing traffic”, “increasing brand awareness”, and “building trust” as most important.

“Gaining social media followers”, “increasing number of email subscribers”, and “helping to attract new talent” were cited as relatively unimportant.

In fact, even though this is a common goal set by marketing agencies, only 26% of respondents cited “getting followers on social media sites” as extremely important.

This finding is especially key for SEO providers that are taking on new clients.

For example, a newly-hired SEO provider that says, “Our first step is going to be to get more likes on your Facebook page” isn’t speaking their client’s language.

On the other hand, kicking off the client-provider relationship with: “I look forward to helping you get more targeted traffic and customers” will likely result in a more satisfied client.

Needless to say, for the relationship to last, you need to deliver on those promises (more on that later). But it does help to understand what clients hope to get out of SEO so you can mold your services and reports based on that.

Sources: Conductor, Backlinko

SEO ROI: What Businesses Can Expect

SEO is widely regarded as one of the highest-return marketing channels, with some estimates placing the average ROI at around 22:1, meaning businesses earn roughly $22 for every $1 invested.

And around 1 in 3 qualified leads (34%) come directly from SEO efforts.

However, ROI varies significantly across industries:

Medical Device – 1,183% ROI, 13 months breakeven
Higher Education & College – 994% ROI, 13 months breakeven
Oil & Gas – 906% ROI, 10 months breakeven
Industrial IoT – 866% ROI, 7 months breakeven
Pharmaceutical – 826% ROI, 9 months breakeven
Manufacturing – 813% ROI, 9 months breakeven
Biotech – 788% ROI, 8 months breakeven
Solar Energy – 770% ROI, 9 months breakeven
Commercial Insurance – 758% ROI, 9 months breakeven
B2B SaaS – 702% ROI, 7 months breakeven
Construction – 681% ROI, 5 months breakeven
HVAC Services – 678% ROI, 6 months breakeven
IT Staffing – 612% ROI, 10 months breakeven
Legal Services – 526% ROI, 14 months breakeven
Healthcare – 532% ROI, 11 months breakeven
Financial Services – 447% ROI, 9 months breakeven
E-commerce – 317% ROI, 9 months breakeven

The rapid emergence of AI also has a bearing on SEO ROI, with 39% reporting a “moderate increase” and 29% claiming a “significant ROI increase”. Only 1% claim that AI reduces their SEO ROI.

Sources: WebsiteBuilderExpert, G2, AllOutSEO, Semrush

Overall Satisfaction With SEO Services Is Low

SEO is a long-term investment, and results often take time to materialize; many campaigns require 6–12 months just to break even. 

That slower payoff, combined with unclear reporting or misaligned expectations, can leave many businesses frustrated with the SEO services they receive.

In our study, we asked our panelists to rate their current SEO provider (or the last SEO provider they worked with) using the Net Promoter Score.

The results were markedly low.

First off, we found that only 30% of small business owners would recommend their current SEO provider.

Importantly, 30% of our respondents considered themselves “detractors”. Which means they would leave a negative review for their last or current SEO provider.

In fact, the SEO services industry as a whole has an NPS score of 0, which is considered “not likely to recommend”.

When we broke down the NPS scores among agencies, freelancers, and a combination of freelancer and agency, we discovered that agencies had a higher average NPS score than freelancers.

However, all three types of services had fairly low NPS scores.

Sources: AllOutSEO, Backlinko

Clients Cite Lack of Education and Resources as Top Reasons for Low Satisfaction Levels

Delivering effective SEO requires significant investment in talent, tools, and ongoing strategy, something many businesses underestimate when hiring a provider.

Building comparable in-house capabilities can cost $150K–$250K+ for senior talent plus thousands per month in tools, which helps explain why expectations often exceed what lower-cost or under-resourced SEO services can realistically deliver.

NPS is a helpful benchmark. However, NPS can only tell you so much. In other words, it’s difficult to understand why SEO services have such low levels of satisfaction.

That’s why we decided to dig deeper into this finding.

And when we dug a bit deeper to understand more about what’s happening, we uncovered a few surprising insights.

First, many unhappy SEO clients fully or partially blamed themselves.

Specifically, 50% stated that “I feel like I need more training to fully benefit from what SEO offers”, and 28% told us that they “do not have the staff resources to properly benefit from SEO”.

This means that low satisfaction levels aren’t solely due to poor quality work. In fact, many clients are simply not in a position to benefit from SEO due to a lack of resources.

Plus, even clients with resources may not make SEO a priority because they don’t have the training to fully understand how SEO benefits them.

For example, let’s say an SEO provider wants to change a title tag on a client’s site. But it doesn’t happen because their developer is swamped with a website redesign. Also, this client may not understand that this simple change can increase their Google traffic due to a lack of training. So they don’t make that change a priority. And progress stalls.

Which leads us to our second interesting finding, the importance of reporting and transparency.

27% of the clients we spoke with agreed with the statement: “I find SEO to be confusing and unclear about what services they offer.” 25% said that “I am not sure what I am really paying for with SEO.”

In other words, many clients are confused about what their provider is doing for them or what they’re getting out of the arrangement.

These are two points that could be remedied with better reporting and increased transparency.

I should point out that a fair number of clients stated that “I feel like SEO companies are very unreliable” and “I don’t think SEO is worth the money for my business.”

Which means that a simple lack of results and ROI is often the culprit behind low client satisfaction levels.

However, as you just saw, there are usually non-performance-based factors at play as well.

Sources: Passionfruit, Backlinko

Turnover In the SEO Services Industry Is Extremely High

Likely due to low global satisfaction levels, we found high levels of turnover in the SEO services industry.

Specifically, we found that 65% of small business owners have worked with at least one SEO provider before:

We also found that 1/4th of our panel have worked with 3 or more providers:

However, our data suggests that most clients don’t switch between SEO providers without careful consideration.

In fact, the clients in our panel have been working with their current SEO service for an average of 3 years. And lapsed clients give their service provider an average of 2 years to deliver before moving on.

That said, we did discover a small subset of clients that do rapidly switch between different providers.

These “rapid switchers” tend to hire and fire SEO companies at a fever pitch.

For example, we classified 10% of our panelists as “rapid switchers” (worked with 3 or more SEO providers over the last year).

Source: Backlinko

Most SEO Clients Leave Due to Lack of Results and Cost

We wanted to know why people decide to leave their current SEO provider or switch to another company.

We referred to people who worked with multiple SEO providers as “lapsed clients”. And we asked this subset of lapsed users what went into their decision.

Here were the results:

Not surprisingly, 82% of our respondents cited “Dissatisfaction with business results” as a factor in their decision. 81% reported that cost played a large role as well.

This suggests that clients don’t look at results in a vacuum. They also pay attention to the ROI that they’re getting from SEO. In other words, delivering results for clients is one thing. But it’s also important to demonstrate the ROI that SEO has on their business. Otherwise, they may leave.

Although lack of results and cost were the two largest factors, they weren’t the only reasons that clients decided to stop working with an SEO provider.

In fact, 80% of lapsed clients stated that they found a better option on their own, which suggests that clients are happy to shop around for an alternative to their current SEO provider.

And 34% cited poor “customer service/ responsiveness” as a factor in their decision.

However, relatively few clients cited “pitched by a competitor” as a reason for leaving. In other words, as long as you can keep your clients happy, they’re not likely to leave. This remains true even if a competitor attempts to poach your client with a better offer.

We also asked our “lapsed clients” panelists to describe to us why they decided to stop using an SEO service. Here’s a sample of those responses:

We also asked a group of users who were happy with their SEO service (“existing clients”) what they liked about it. Here’s what they told us:

Source: Backlinko

Existing Clients are 2x More Likely to Be Web Savvy Than Lapsed Clients

We asked our panel to self-report their level of “web savviness”.

Here were the results:

As you can see, 37% of SEO clients consider their web savviness as “somewhat” or “not very”.

The upshot here is that many clients simply don’t have the web savviness to understand key digital marketing terms, like “title tags”, “CSS”, and “backlinks”. This suggests that SEO companies should largely avoid this sort of jargon in favor of terms like “leads”, “sales”, and “first page Google rankings”.

In fact, this is backed up by another finding from our panel: that lapsed clients are significantly more likely to consider themselves not web savvy.

Specifically, we found that existing clients were 2x more likely to consider themselves “extremely web savvy” than lapsed clients.

This suggests that web-savvy users are in a better position to understand how their SEO service is helping them. So they decide to stay. On the other hand, clients who aren’t web savvy may not fully understand what they’re getting from their SEO provider. So they decide to leave.

Source: Backlinko

Conclusion

I hope these findings helped you get a better feel for the SEO services industry.

I’d like to thank Northstar Research Partners for helping me design and conduct the survey that formed much of this report.

And if you’d like to learn more about how this survey was conducted, here’s a PDF of our study methods.

The post The SEO Services Report appeared first on Backlinko.

2026-04-26 22:50:21

Most location pages fail for one of two reasons: They’re too thin (just an address and phone number) or too generic (the same template with city names swapped out).

Google sees through both. So does ChatGPT.

But here’s what a good location page can do:

• Rank in organic search
• Link from your Google Business Profile (GBP)
• Get cited in AI answers
• Serve as a landing page for ads
• Convert visitors into leads

One page, five jobs.

Most location pages do none of this.

They just sit there. Technically live, technically indexed, technically doing nothing.

I’ve built location pages for HVAC companies, electricians, painters, funeral homes, and more across dozens of markets.

The ones that rank fast — sometimes within 48 hours — aren’t longer or stuffed with more keywords.

They’re built for how customers actually interact with that business.

In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how to build location pages that work for your business model. Whether you have 3 locations or 300, physical storefronts or service areas.

You’ll get two plug-and-play templates, ranking tactics, and strategies for showing up when someone asks an AI “best [your service] in [city].”

Two Types of Location Pages (and When You Need Each)

Before you build anything, you need to know which type of location page you’re creating.

Get this wrong, and you’ll confuse users, Google, and AI systems.

For example: A bank branch in Philadelphia needs a completely different page than an HVAC company serving Philadelphia from 30 miles away.

Take Bank of America’s Philadelphia branch.

The page shows exactly what someone needs to visit: full address, hours, parking, what to expect when they walk in.

Now compare that to Sila, an HVAC company serving Southeastern Pennsylvania.

They don’t have an office in Philadelphia. But their page proves they cover the area and gives customers confidence to call them.

Physical Location Pages

Creating location-specific pages is how you convert local searches to foot traffic.

• What it is: A page for a place customers actually visit
• Examples: Bank branches, retail stores, medical offices, restaurants, walk-in clinics
• User intent: Directions, hours, parking, what to expect when they arrive
• Key signal: You have a real address where customers walk in

Merit Dental’s Sandusky location shows exactly what visitors need: address, hours, map, and a photo of the actual building.

Everything invites you to visit.

Service Area Pages

Service area pages are how you dominate search in 50 towns without opening 50 offices.

• What it is: A page for a geographic area you serve, but don’t have a physical presence in
• Examples:
  • Mobile/field services: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, painting
  • Brick-and-mortar with regional draw: Chiropractors, dentists, urgent care
• User intent: Proof you serve their area, credibility, why they should choose you
• Key signal: You want visibility in this area but have no physical address there

Infinity Roofer travels to customers across the Denver metro, so their service area page focuses on building credibility through local expertise (mentioning “Denver’s infamous hailstorms”).

Note: Neighborhood pages (e.g., “Electrician in South Philadelphia”) are a more granular version of service area pages. Same approach, tighter geographic focus.

But service area pages aren’t just for businesses that come to you.

Brick-and-mortar locations should use them too when they draw customers from surrounding towns.

For example, Centre for Healing Arts is based in Limerick, Pennsylvania. But they created this service area page for Pottstown, just 7 miles away.

How They Work Together

Many businesses need both.

For example:

McCafferty Funeral & Cremation Inc. has two physical offices: Philadelphia and New Hope, Pennsylvania.

They also serve families in surrounding communities like Lambertville, New Jersey (just 2 miles from their New Hope location).

They need physical location pages for their two offices and service area pages for nearby towns like Lambertville where they don’t have a physical presence.

To make this structure work, link them strategically.

Service area pages link to your nearest physical location. Physical location pages link out to the service areas they cover.

This creates a clear hierarchy for users and search engines.

How to Make Your Location Pages Perform

Whether you’re optimizing for organic rankings, AI citations, paid traffic, or conversions, the same core principles apply.

Match Searcher Intent

Does your page match what someone searching “[service] in [city]” actually wants?

Physical location searchers are often looking for logistics. Hours, directions, parking, what to expect when they visit.

Service area searchers want proof you serve their region and reasons to choose you.

Mismatch = bounce.

Add Real Local Value (Not Just City Name Swaps)

This is where most location landing pages fail.

Swapping city names isn’t unique. Google knows.

Check out these near-identical pages from an HVAC company in Tucson, Arizona.

Real local value means neighborhood-specific details, regional challenges, and local expertise you can’t copy-paste.

For example, Wade Paint Co’s Sullivan’s Island house painting page includes FAQs about historic preservation requirements.

These are concerns unique to this barrier island’s homes.

Or Bill Joplin’s Plano HVAC page, which discusses how Plano’s climate and types of homes affect system sizing.

Details only someone actually working in that market would know.

Right-Size Your Content Depth

Not every location page needs 2,000 words.

But major purchases like home remodeling, medical procedures, or legal services typically require extensive information.

Why?

Because customers are investing significant time and money.

Check out this service area page from Assembly Squad Remodeling, a bathroom contractor.

It addresses different Chicago building types, the specific challenges of each, even pricing ranges for various project scopes.

Low-consideration pages can be leaner. Like this laundromat location page in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Consideration isn’t the only factor in determining page depth.

Competitive markets require more content to differentiate. Less competitive markets can get away with less.

So, match your page’s depth to what the decision actually requires.

Consider Authority

Domain authority matters, but it’s not everything.

I’ve ranked service area pages on domains with Authority Scores (AS) of 20-30 in as little as 48 hours.

Sometimes, in even less time.

With even lower Authority Scores.

How?

I focused on building pages around searcher intent.

In my experience, a well-built location page on a smaller site can beat a thin page on a high-authority domain.

Like how this local painting company is outranking CertaPro Painters, a national franchise. As well as Yelp.

Structure for AI and Search Engines

Schema markup is table stakes. You need LocalBusiness, FAQPage, and Review at minimum.

Scannable sections with descriptive headings help crawlers, AI systems, and humans find what they need fast.

Optimize for Each Channel

The core factors above apply everywhere. But each channel rewards certain elements more than others.

Organic Rankings

The more comprehensive your content, the better it ranks.

Answer questions competitors ignore. Address objections before users have to ask.

You still need keywords, too. Naturally integrated in your title, headings, and body content.

Just don’t stuff “[city] [service]” in every sentence:

Local backlinks to that specific location page signal you’re actually relevant to that area.

Get mentioned by local chambers, news sites, neighborhood blogs, industry directories.

Real images make a difference, too.

Photos of your actual location, your team, or projects you’ve completed.

Stock photos just won’t cut it.

AI Citations

When someone asks Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, or Perplexity for local recommendations, will your business show up?

Third-party “best of” features increase your citation chances significantly.

When you’re mentioned on local roundups, listicles, or “top 10” posts, AI systems are more likely to reference you. They trust these aggregated sources.

Comparison tables also make it easy for AI to pull and cite your content.

Format your information so it’s scannable. Pricing breakdowns, service comparisons, coverage areas. AI loves data it can parse quickly.

FAQ sections with clear question headers work because large language models (LLMs) are trained in part on Q&A content.

Write your questions the way people actually ask them. Then, answer them directly.

Structure your content the way these systems are trained to consume information, and you’re more likely to get cited.

Experiment: What AI actually cites for local queries

I tested 30 “best [service] in [city]” queries across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Then, cataloged every source in their citation panels — 725 citations total.

Each platform told a completely different story.

Google AI Mode leaned heavily on Yelp listings (32%) and Reddit threads (30%). Community discussions and review platforms drove the majority of its citations.

ChatGPT favored editorial “best of” lists more than any other platform — 22% of its citations came from third-party roundups. Getting featured in a local magazine’s “Top 10” list matters here.

Perplexity was the outlier. It cited business websites directly 73% of the time — including location pages. Strong site content gets found.

The takeaway: each platform pulls from a different layer of the web.

Yelp profiles and Reddit mentions for Google AI Mode. Editorial roundups for ChatGPT. Your own site for Perplexity.[/largequote]

Paid Landing Pages

If you’re running Google Ads for local services, your location pages make perfect landing pages.

But only if you get the messaging right.

Your ad says “24/7 Emergency Plumber in Orange County”?

That exact promise needs to be the first thing someone sees when they land on the page.

Not buried in the third paragraph. Not implied. Right there in the headline.

When your landing page headline matches your ad copy, Google sees a better user experience.

That improves your Quality Score and lowers your cost per click (CPC).

Specificity matters too.

If your ad targets “Landscaping Denver,” don’t send them to a service area page for all of Colorado.

Send them to your Denver-specific page with Denver details, Denver reviews, Denver project photos.

Bottom line: Generic landing pages bleed money. Location-specific ones convert higher and cost less.

Pro tip: The goal here isn’t just to rank — it’s to take up as much search engine results page (SERP) real estate as possible.

With the right setup, your brand can appear three times in a single SERP: your GBP in the map pack, your location page in organic results, and your PPC ad at the top (all using that same location page).

When someone sees your brand multiple times on the same SERP, you get instant credibility. And, it can boost your click-through rates (CTRs).

Most businesses treat these as separate channels. Smart ones use location pages to connect them all.

Template 1: Physical Location Page

Use this template when customers come to you: a storefront, office, branch, restaurant, or clinic they physically visit.

Core Modules

• Hero section (business name, location, primary CTA, contact form)
• Address & directions (full address, embedded map, parking/accessibility details)
• Hours of operation
• What to expect when you visit
• Services offered at this location
• Photos of the location (interior, exterior, team, waiting area)
• Credibility & trust signals (industry associations, BBB accreditation, certifications)
• Special offers for this location
• Reviews & testimonials (prioritize from customers who actually visited this location)
• Links to other physical locations
• Contact info & CTA

Depth Modules

These separate pages that rank from pages that don’t.

Competitive markets and high-stakes services (medical, legal, home remodeling) need most or all of these. Less competitive markets can use fewer.

Hyperlocal Content

This is where you show you actually operate in this neighborhood.

Talk about the area’s vibe, nearby landmarks people know, and transit options.

Cover parking situations and accessibility details customers care about.

The goal is to paint a picture of what it’s like to visit you here — with details only someone who actually works in this neighborhood would know.

Extended FAQs

Go beyond the basics like hours and directions.

Answer questions about the visit itself: “Is there parking?” “How long is the wait?” “Can I walk in or do I need an appointment?”

Address common queries about payment options: “What insurance do you accept?” “Do you offer payment plans?”

Include neighborhood-specific questions like “Are you near [landmark]?” or “Do you serve customers from [adjacent area]?”

Structure these FAQs with clear question headers so AI systems can parse and cite them easily.

Team/Staff

If customers interact with specific staff at this location, introduce them.

Not generic corporate bios. Actual people who work here. Headshots, credentials, specialties.

For professional services like medical, legal, and financial, this builds significant trust.

Community Involvement

If you sponsor local teams, partner with neighborhood businesses, or support area charities, highlight it here.

“We proudly sponsor the South Charleston Little League” proves you’re part of the community, not just operating there for profit.

Template 2: Service Area Page

Use this template when you serve an area but don’t have a physical presence there.

This covers both:

• Mobile services (you go to customers)
• Brick-and-mortar businesses drawing from surrounding towns (they come to you, but your office isn’t in their area).

Core Modules

• Hero section (service + location, primary CTA, contact form)
• Services offered in this area
• Special offers for this area
• Photos showing your work in this area (or team working in similar neighborhoods)
• Credibility & trust signals (industry associations, certifications, years serving this area)
• Reviews & testimonials (prioritize reviews from customers in this specific area)
• Link to nearest physical location (if applicable “We’re based 15 minutes away in [city]”)
• Contact info & CTA

Depth Modules

Here’s how you build a service area page that actually competes. The more competitive your market, the more of these modules you’ll need.

Hyperlocal Content

Show you actually understand this area’s unique challenges.

Maybe you’re a pest control company that can speak intelligently about termite pressure zones in the Southeast.

Or, a pool service that addresses the hard water issues Arizona homeowners deal with constantly.

The more specific you get about problems only someone working in this market would recognize, the harder you are to compete with.

Previous Work in Area

Prove you actually serve this geography with specifics.

We’ve completed 180+ pool installations in Scottsdale over the last 4 years.”

Then, add examples. “Last summer we built three saltwater pools in the DC Ranch community during that record-breaking heat wave.”

Before/after photos from local projects work here, too. Real numbers and real examples beat vague claims every time.

Extended FAQs

Service area pages need to answer two types of questions: Can you actually help me, and do you understand what makes my area different?

Answer service logistics questions like “Do you service [specific neighborhood]?” or “How quickly can you get here?”

Address technical questions tied to local conditions like “Do I need a permit for AC replacement in [city]?” or “What foundation issues are common in this area?”

Write your questions the way people actually ask them. Then, answer them directly.

Scaling for Enterprise

Everything above works whether you have 5 locations or 500.

But at scale, new challenges emerge.

Lock Down Brand Standards

Centralized templates prevent local teams from going rogue.

Define what’s editable (local details, testimonials, staff bios) versus what’s locked (brand messaging, legal disclaimers, core service descriptions).

Create a style guide specifically for location pages.

Build approval workflows for new pages or major edits so you catch problems before they go live.

Avoid the Duplicate Content Trap

The biggest risk at scale is 50 pages that look identical with city names swapped.

Each page needs genuinely unique content — not just find-and-replace.

Like these examples from Public Storage.

They stay unique by tying each page to real places and explaining the specific storage needs that come with living there.

Audit regularly for pages that are too similar. Remember that thin pages hurt your entire domain, not just that one page.

Choose Your Content Team Structure

Centralized teams give you more control and consistency but less local flavor.

Local teams create more authentic, hyperlocal content but are harder to manage for quality.

The hybrid approach usually works best: The central team owns templates and core messaging; local teams add hyperlocal details and testimonials.

Clear ownership prevents pages from going stale.

Connecting Physical Locations to Service Areas

If you have three offices serving 50 towns, your structure matters.

This avoids confusion for users and search engines while signaling which pages matter most.

Build Neighborhood Pages That Don’t Suck

Don’t create neighborhood pages for every ZIP code.

Prioritize competitive markets, areas with genuine search volume, and places where you have real hyperlocal expertise.

Thin neighborhood pages hurt more than they help. Ten strong neighborhood pages beat 100 weak ones.

Audit and Fix Underperformers

Monitor your location pages’ SEO performance to spot underperformers.

Run regular audits for thin content, outdated information, and broken links.

Set a refresh cadence: quarterly reviews at minimum. Kill pages that aren’t earning traffic or conversions.

Set Up Your Production System

Use CMS templates that enforce your structure.

At my agency, we use WordPress with custom templates to ensure consistency across all location pages.

You also want to track all location pages in a spreadsheet or database with URLs, last updated dates, and performance metrics.

Set automated alerts for pages that haven’t been touched in 6+ months.

Programmatic approaches can work if you have genuinely unique data for each page. For example, a brand like Expedia pulling real hotels, prices, and reviews.

But if you’re just swapping city names, you’re creating thin content at scale. In that case, build fewer pages manually with real depth.

Start Small, Scale Smart

Start with one page.

Pick your highest-priority location or service area and build it using the templates above.

Don’t try to launch 50 pages at once.

Get that first page ranking, converting, and getting cited by AI. Then, use it as your model for the rest.

Remember: One well-built location page can do the work of five different marketing assets.

But most businesses will never build pages this detailed. That’s your advantage.

Need help managing location pages at scale?

Our guide to multi-location SEO shows you how to optimize GBPs, track citations, and coordinate review strategies across every location without losing your mind.

The post How to Build Location Pages That Rank, Convert, and Get Cited appeared first on Backlinko.