One of the burning topics at the intersection of traditional SEO and emerging AI engine optimization (AIO) is the degree of overlap between them. Can good SEO practices translate to good positioning in an AI search world, or is the SEO playbook dead? The short answer is both and neither.
“Sometimes we can get embattled between ‘SEO is dead,’ and ‘the entire world is going to change,'” Insites VP of Sales Chris Fletcher said to a room full of digital marketers at the recent L26 event in Houston. “As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in between.”
This was the topic of a recent study by Insites, which the company detailed for the L26 audience. The report examined 10,000 U.S. small businesses to track their presence and visibility across search engines (e.g., local pack presence), and how those same businesses stacked up in AI engine results.
And the results? As we’ve examined, there are some traditional SEO ranking factors that are shared with AI Engines. And there are some SEO factors that have no correlation with the ways that AI engines surface content about SMBs. The key to SMB visibility in the new AI search world era is to balance those factors.
Positivity Bias
SEO factors that Insites tracked include classic metrics such as rankings. AI engine factors included awareness (Does AI know the SMB and can it give accurate answers?); reputation (Does AI talk highly of the SMB?); and recommendation (Does the SMB show up when people ask for the services offered?).
Starting with awareness, it’s a double edged sword, with good news and bad. 94 percent of U.S. businesses are known to ChatGPT. However, there’s a one in 60 chance that AI engines will hallucinate an unrelated or non-existent business, and it cited wrong contact info 44 percent of the time.
As for reputation, ChatGPT responded positively about businesses 80 percent of the time, and Perplexity did so 73 percent of the time – which both result from AI Engines’ well-established positivity bias. As for recommendation, 41 percent of businesses were never recommended by ChatGPT, and 69 for Perplexity.
More of Everything
Getting back to the question of how AIO compares with SEO, where are there correlations? When looking at the SEO factors that correlate to AI visibility, GBP reviews and Local Pack presence are influential, as is website content. Number of pages and keywords largely influence AI-engine visibility, says Insites.
One takeaway is that the size of a business’s presence is key to AI engine visibility. We’re talking more pages, more content, more reviews, and citations. Accuracy also matters in terms of having consistent info across the web. Answers-based content is also influential, such as FAQs on your website.
“In the new world, what really matters is the heft of information about a business online,” Insites founder and CEO Andrew Waite said. “It’s whether the information is consistent. Does the SMB have reviews? Are the reviews quality and mention services? Is the content relevant? Does it answer questions?”
The Foundation
As for what doesn’t correlate, Insites points to technical SEO, such as core web vitals and page performance. AI-specific format hacks also don’t work. Our AI search world cares more about the content than the formatting. And no preference was shown towards interactive elements like bookings and live chat.
Another thing worth mentioning is the once-prevalent attitude about only needing a Facebook Page and nothing else. That’s largely debunked in an AI search world. Insites reports that AI Engines cited social media channels only .7 percent of the time (less than one percent) when asked about a given business.
Boiling it all down, Insites points to a few factors as weighing heavily for AI engine visibility. These are inherited from SEO but reordered in importance. The foundation is authority (your website), followed by validation (GPB & listings), reputation (Yelp reviews), and amplification (listicles, backlinks, etc.).
Rules of the Game
As for what this all means for SEO pros and local marketing agencies, all the chaos and disruption brought by this change is an opportunity for those who treat it as such. There are more questions from SMBs than ever about how their marketing is disrupted by all this AI stuff they’re hearing about.
The opportunity is to be a trusted advisor and hold their hands into this new era. But stay away from disingenuous practices such as promising silver-bullet results, says Insites, and selling with fear-mongering. It’s just like white-hat and black-hat SEO. Be one of the good guys, not slimy opportunists.
“It’s our responsibility as the people in this room to figure out what the rules of the game are,” said Fletcher. “Optimization is Optimization, and you owe it to your SMB clients to understand the current rules of the game, and the fact that the scoring has changed.”
Header image credit: Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash
