I keep reviewing AEO strategies that look great on paper yet miss the biggest AEO lever that currently exists to quickly drive SQLs and revenue.
Everyone’s obsessing over prompts, schemas, and content tweaks in AEO. Yeah, those are great. But 999/1000 times a brand is mentioned by LLMs as a recommendation to a prompt at the middle or bottom of the funnel, that brand’s website was not cited as the source in making the decision.
Meaning narratives about your brand are shaped almost entirely by off-page SEO. It’s not your own content. It’s not your own content structure. It’s links and mentions on comparisons, reviews, and industry round ups.
Ask for any solution-based recommendation in any LLM at the decision making stage. What do you see? A list, chart, or table comparing the best, with citations and sources that include:
- Reviews of the solutions
- Roundups of best solutions for X industry
- Comparisons of X and Y solution
The amount of times I see a brand’s AEO strategy lacking targeted link building is insane. Truly NGMI (not gonna make it).
This is the number one lever to pull for AEO.
Just like EEAT cannot be entirely controlled by what you say about yourself, neither can sentiment and mention rates in AI.
What other people say about you and your brand and your solution is the single best way to drive increased share of voice right now. And it will almost certainly always be this way. No brand is going to review themselves fairly without bias, rank themselves 10th in the industry, or say they aren’t the right solution and X competitor is beating them on all fronts.
So search and generative engines pull from third-party sentiment for (at least somewhat more) honest recommendations.
If you aren’t accounting for this in your AEO strategy, you’re NGMI.
And the good news? This approach benefits both AI visibility and traditional blue link rankings. Get out there and get some great links and brand mentions.
Steps to do this:
- Start by typing in your most coveted bottom of the funnel purchase decision prompts or keywords.
- Look at what format any given LLM spits out information in (comparison, reviews, etc).
- Identify the source list that your chosen LLM used to give you the information.
- Export that source list into a Google Sheet.
- Identify the author of each article and page you just exported.
- Head to Linkedin, and build a connection with them.
- Offer value first in some way (mention them on social, in your newsletter, on your own website or articles, etc).
- Then collaborate and see how you can get your brand listed on their comparison, review, or round up.
-Jeremy
