How people search for information online is changing faster than it has in decades.

And with that comes the need for businesses to rapidly adapt their online strategies to capture these new searches.

Historically, everything focused on search engine optimization. But today, AI-powered search is where consumers are moving their habits to.

With it, marketing teams and business owners must focus on generative engine optimization (GEO), also known as answer engine optimization (AEO).

Though this new world of search requires learning new terminology and adapting strategy, it isn’t a full overhaul of the tactics you’ve been employing to reach customers and develop leads.

GEO still relies heavily on many of the SEO signals you’ve spent the last decades building, but with a few new tactics and greater emphasis in certain places. So before you dive too deep into AI content, make sure you’ve mastered how to integrate keywords in blog posts for maximum SEO value.

A Guide to Writing Content Optimized for AI

First, keep doing what you’ve been doing for SEO. Just ensure you’re using modern standards and avoiding things like unnatural use of keywords or keyword stuffing. Then integrate these additional steps to writing great content that gets included in AI overviews and cited in AI answers.

1. Demonstrate First-hand Experience/Expertise

Spend some time on sites from publishers like Forbes, CNN, or your industry’s leading news source and you’ll see the content focuses on first-hand experience or expertise.

The author has used the product, gone on the trip they’re reviewing, or found success with the business concept they are covering. In a world where most content is AI-generated, this first-hand experience shows the content is unique and that the author knows what they are talking about.

Take one of the leading articles of 2025 from Harvard Business Review: A Retirement Expert Explores Finding Fulfillment After Work.

The expert is identified in the title and she walks through what makes someone find fulfillment in life after work. It’s in a question-and-answer format, once again signalling that this content is human-written and real.

That doesn’t mean all content needs to take this exact format, but it’s one way of highlighting expertise and first-hand experience.

2. Include Sections with Clear Headlines

Breaking content into sections with subheads is nothing new. It supports readers who want to skim the article or scroll to a specific section, making it good for user experience while supporting your efforts in reaching readers via search engines and answer engines.

HubSpot didn’t invent content marketing, but it brought a level of understanding and expertise to it that many marketers hadn’t yet fathomed when it coined inbound marketing in 2005. If you look at the company’s content, you’ll see it broken down into sections that could almost standalone as mini articles.

Take one of the latest articles to come from the company: The future of marketing isn’t humans vs. AI — it’s humans with AI. You’ll see a variety of headings with clear, descriptive content underneath. And if you only read one section, you’d still learn something.

3. Add FAQs

FAQs have been on the rise for several years, long before AI. They help you think like a customer and answer their burning questions.

With the dawn of AI, they also make it easier for machines to pull answers to questions directly from your text. You’re basically doing the heavy lifting for the answer engine to bring together relevant answers based on common questions people ask.

If you aren’t sure where to start with FAQs, Google your content’s topic area. Look at the “people also ask” section for inspiration or longtail keyword questions from your SEO software, such as SEMRush or Moz, and if you don’t have those tools, you can use Google’s “People Also Ask” results.

4. Publish Comprehensive but Concise Content

At first, this might sound like a contradiction – that content can’t be both comprehensive and concise. But it is possible to do both.

One way to do that is to use your headings and sections to your full advantage to break down the content into manageable chunks to read. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and illustrations to help make the content come to life.

While you’re aiming for comprehensive content, say it in as few words as you can without sacrificing clarity. AI-generated content tends to include repetition and fluff. Your content will stand out if it is concise.

5. Do Your Research and Include Credible Facts and References

Linking to reputable research and outside content will help make your content credible. AI-generated content often has phantom content, or facts and figures that it makes up or implies from information on the internet. So if you use AI to help research for your articles, make sure you’re verifying everything you include.

Because there’s so much AI-generated content on the internet, your well-researched content with clear references will stand out.

One way to make your content stand out is to include your own research with unique facts and figures. Conducting research is time-consuming, but it can pay off with backlinks and references to your content.

Additional AI Optimization Tactics for Your Site

While there’s plenty you can do on page for AI optimization, you should also consider your site’s authority as a whole. Consider these long-term strategy tactics that will elevate all your content.

Don’t Just Publish on Your Website – Think About Your Broader Online Presence

To get cited in AI, you must do more than focus on your own website. AI demands a broader perspective to pull trust signals from.

Brand mentions, backlinks from highly reputable sources in your field, guest posts, and media coverage are all essential elements of building out your online presence.

By having references to your brand on other reputable sites, you signal to search and AI algorithms that you are worth quoting. It’s like those sites are offering a referral to you that AI can then vet and decide whether to use.

Google has been clear that it uses things like Google Business Profiles to better understand a company’s products and services and enhance AI responses. So ensure accurate listings on such sites and keep products clear and up to date.

Create High-Quality Images and Video to Go Along with Your Content

Quality visuals can take content from decent to great. Incorporating images and videos into your online content helps AI search bring in relevant visuals beyond just offering website links.

Look for ways to support your text with relevant images and video. And ideally, these should be images and video that you own or have created for your content. Anyone can download stock images from a site. But producing visuals that enhance your website content will work wonders for signaling that your content is unique and worth citing.

Meet AI Optimization Technical Site Requirements

In most cases, making content adjustments is simple. But changes to technical requirements for AI optimization can challenge smaller teams with limited IT resources. Without the technical pieces, your efforts in content changes likely won’t do much. So make sure you’re giving these technical requirements the attention they deserve.

1. Review Your Site’s Crawlability: Inadvertently, you might be preventing Google, ChatGPT or other answer engines from discovering your content to make it available to its audience. Ensure your content is crawlable. An easy way of doing this is setting up Google Search Console and reviewing the reports for pages crawled or reasons for pages not being crawled. 
2. Avoid JavaScript When Possible: Google can read JavaScript without any issues. However, JavaScript does require very specific frameworks to meet SEO best practices. So when possible, avoid it. But when you must use it, ensure it isn’t blocked.
3. Spend Time on the User Experience: Visit your site as if you were a first-time visitor. Test it on a variety of devices, such as a laptop, smartphone and tablet (ideally on varying operating systems). Ensure that all elements of your site show up correctly without latency. Think about whether clickable elements are clickable based on screen size. Navigate using the menus and see how they perform. Think through what a customer might be doing on the site and try to find things like help centers, contact information and answers to common questions. Websites with high bounce rates and low time on page signal to search engines and answer engines that your site isn’t worth sending people to.
4. Avoid Duplicate Content: Duplicate content creates a poor user experience and AI engines might not crawl your resources if it deems they are duplicates of something elsewhere on the internet. To avoid this, clean up any duplicate content on your site and never copy and paste entire paragraphs or elements from one page to another to prevent future duplicate content issues. Each page should have a unique purpose, and therefore, offer unique content to its visitors.

Experts to Improve Your AI Visibility

GEO optimization is a critical component of any digital marketing strategy. It’s based on crucial SEO fundamentals, but requires an extra eye toward content, structure and attention to technical details.

The team at Two Wheels Marketing has helped businesses just like yours gain greater visibility and mentions in AI. We’re ready to do the same for you. Get started now by contacting us for a free consultation.