99% of “How to rank in ChatGPT + AI Search” advice is literal bulls****.
It’s like we’re back in 2010 peddling SEO hacks…
👉 “Update your post to say it was published today for freshness”
👉 “Spin up a dozen Reddit accounts and sneak in mentions”
👉 “Drop an llms.txt file and pray”
Everyone’s chasing shortcuts. Nobody’s asking the real question… W
hy do brands actually show up in AI overviews and LLM prompts? It’s not because of a gimmick or some random hack.
It’s not because they added an FAQ and suddenly exploded their business overnight.
It’s because they’ve built a brand worth mentioning. They did the hard work.
Newsflash: if you want traffic and mentions from both Google and AI, stop looking for hacks and start doing the boring stuff:
1️⃣ Nail traditional SEO with content that actually helps people at every stage of their journey — educate them, support them, and then send them offers they can’t refuse.
2️⃣ Build authority off-site through links, PR, and coverage in places your customers already trust to shape the narrative of your brand and spread awareness to new audiences, capturing more traffic and authority in multiple spaces at once beyond your own website.
3️⃣ Invest in community and real engagement on the platforms your audience lives on, from social to email and everything in between.
4️⃣ Put your brand in the room where the conversations happen — create custom data and studies that position your brand as a thought leader, attend conferences and build real-world connections that drive referrals and offline conversations about your brand, show up on podcasts and share your insights.
The winners in SEO and AI have the same things in common:
Reputation.
Authority.
Content.
Brand.
Did Nerdwallet become an SEO Goliath by chasing dumb hacks that faded with every algorithm update, and now with every AI model update, too?
No, they published stellar content, every single day. Then they updated it, reworked it, promoted it, built authority, and rinsed + repeated for 15 freaking years straight without stopping…
And you’re trying to game the algorithm overnight with cheap hacks?
Good luck.
The same brands that have won and are winning in traditional SEO understand this, and will be the same brands that dominate AI, too.
