SEO & AI Search

Rank everywhere people search. Google. ChatGPT. Perplexity. AI Overviews.

Search has split into two engines: Google’s blue links, and the AI answers stacked on top of them. Most SEO still optimizes for one. You need both. Here’s what actually works.

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The problem

Search isn’t one engine anymore. Your SEO can’t be either.

Roughly 45% of Google searches now surface an AI Overview at the top of the page. Those overviews cut clicks to websites by up to 58%. Ranking #1 on the blue links no longer means what it did three years ago. The query you used to win is now answered above the fold by a synthesized paragraph that may or may not cite you.

At the same time, your buyers are running searches that never touch Google at all. They ask ChatGPT to compare vendors. They ask Perplexity to find the best option in their city. They ask Claude to summarize what your category actually does. If your content is not built to be extracted and cited by those systems, you are invisible inside the conversation that is selecting your replacement.

The companies that win the next decade of search rank in two places at once: on Google’s blue links, and inside the AI answer that sits on top of them. That is the work.

Why most SEO fails

Six ways agencies waste your retainer.

1. Generic keyword lists. An agency runs your domain through a tool, exports a CSV of 200 keywords sorted by search volume, and calls it a strategy. Volume without intent is worthless. A 10,000-search-volume keyword that attracts tire-kickers is a worse investment than a 200-search keyword from someone with a credit card out.

2. Thin content that doesn’t answer the query. Most content is written to hit a word count, not to be the best answer on the internet for a specific question. Google’s ranking systems and the AI engines pulling from them are both built to detect exactly that gap.

3. No topical authority. One blog post about a topic goes nowhere. Ranking requires a hub-and-spoke of interconnected content that signals to Google you are the authority on a subject, not a tourist.

4. Black-hat link schemes. Paid link farms, PBNs, comment spam. These work until they don’t, and when they stop working they take your whole domain down with them. Not on the menu here.

5. Vanity metrics. Reports full of impressions, traffic, and keyword counts with zero line connecting any of it to revenue. If the SEO report doesn’t end in pipeline and booked revenue, it’s theater.

6. Google-only thinking. Most agencies still optimize as if Google’s ten blue links are the entire search market. That model is shrinking by the month. If your strategy ignores AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, your retainer is paying for half a job.

The framework

Two engines. One playbook.

Search has split. The work splits with it. Every engagement runs two parallel tracks built on a single research foundation, so the same audit, the same keyword strategy, and the same competitive intel feed both sides of your visibility.

Track A: Traditional Search (rank on Google)

The seven-phase SEO program your competitors wish they had:

Phase 1: Technical Audit. 15 points across crawlability, indexing, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, and structured data.
Phase 2: Keyword Strategy. Clusters grouped by intent (informational, commercial, transactional, branded), scored for difficulty and revenue potential, mapped to specific pages.
Phase 3: Competitive Analysis. The RACE framework across 8 dimensions: keyword gap, content gap, backlink profile, technical benchmarking, AI visibility, paid search intel, SERP feature ownership, social and brand signals.
Phase 4: On-Page Optimization. Per-page briefs covering title tags, meta descriptions, H1/H2 structure, internal linking, image alt text, FAQ schema, and E-E-A-T signals.
Phase 5: Topical Authority Map. Hub-and-spoke pillar and cluster architecture that tells Google your site is the definitive source on the subject, not a tourist.
Phase 6: Content & Link Strategy. 90-day content calendar prioritized by revenue impact, plus 13 white-hat link acquisition methods (digital PR, HARO, broken-link reclamation, resource pages, unlinked mentions, data studies, expert roundups).
Phase 7: KPI Dashboard. 8 categories tracked monthly: organic revenue, qualified lead flow, keyword rank movement, SERP feature wins, AI citations, backlink velocity, Core Web Vitals, and content performance.

Track B: AI Search (get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, Copilot)

Built on the three pillars validated by the Princeton GEO research (KDD 2024), which measured citation rate lift across the major answer engines:

Pillar 1: Structure. AI systems extract passages, not pages. Definition blocks, comparison tables, FAQ schema, 40-to-60-word answer paragraphs, and headings phrased the way buyers actually phrase questions. Your content gets rebuilt to be quotable.
Pillar 2: Authority. The Princeton study ranked the tactics that move citation rates the most: cited sources +40%, statistics with sources +37%, expert quotations +30%, authoritative tone +25%. Every priority page gets rewritten against that scoreboard. Optimized content gets cited roughly 3x more often than non-optimized content.
Pillar 3: Presence. AI engines cite where you appear, not just your own domain. Wikipedia mentions account for ~7.8% of ChatGPT citations. Reddit accounts for ~1.8%. Add industry roundups, review platforms, YouTube, and Quora and you have the third-party visibility brief that puts you in the places these systems trust most.

What you get

Deliverables, every engagement.

No mystery boxes. No “monthly hours” without a scope. Every engagement produces:

Full 15-point technical audit with prioritized remediation
Keyword map with intent scoring and page assignments
Competitive analysis document across 8 dimensions, including AI visibility
Topical authority map (pillars, clusters, internal linking plan)
90-day content calendar with per-page briefs
On-page optimization briefs scored against the Princeton GEO citation tactics
Link acquisition plan with target domains and outreach angles
AI Visibility Audit: a queries × platforms matrix across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot
llms.txt + schema-for-LLMs implementation (JSON-LD: Organization, FAQ, HowTo, Article)
Citation-building plan: a third-party visibility brief covering Wikipedia, Reddit, industry publications, review platforms, YouTube, and Quora
Per-platform AI citation monitoring with monthly trend reporting
Monthly KPI dashboard with revenue and pipeline attribution

Process

14-day strategy sprint, then monthly execution.

Days 1 to 14: Strategy sprint. Technical audit, keyword research, competitive analysis, and the AI Visibility Audit run in parallel. By day 14 you have the full strategy document: what to fix, what to build, in what order, scored for both Google rank and AI citation. Nothing ships before this is signed off.

Month 1 onward: Execution retainer. Monthly content production, on-page optimization, link acquisition, technical fixes, AI-citation rewrites, and third-party presence work. One report at the end of every month tracking both engines: rankings, pipeline, revenue, and AI citation rate by platform.

SEO compounds. Month one feels slow. Month six feels obvious. Month twelve is when the competition stops being able to catch you on either engine.

Investment

Custom. Priced to scope.

Scope is driven by competitive difficulty, content velocity required, target cluster count, and the depth of AI-citation work needed in your category. You get a precise number after the discovery call, not before.

Fit

Who this is for. And who it’s not.

This is for you if:

You have existing organic traffic and want to compound it
You’re a service business that wants to dominate your local market on both Google and AI search
You’re a DTC or SaaS brand with enough SKUs or use cases to justify programmatic SEO
You’ve already tried freelancers or cheap agencies and gotten vanity-metric reports
You want to be cited inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, not just ranked on Google

This is NOT for you if:

You don’t have a content budget to publish consistently
You’re pre-revenue and need your first paying customer, not long-term compounding
You need results in 30 days (SEO compounds over 6 to 12 months)
You want cheap link packages or AI-spam content farms. Those are not on the menu.

See where you can win. On Google and inside AI.

Apply for an AI Growth Package. You get a free audit of your site, your category, and your current AI visibility before any invoice changes hands.

Apply for an AI Growth Package

The AI Growth Package is the diagnostic-first engagement model: research and strategy delivered before any invoice.