Why your next SEO strategy should start with ChatGPT, not a search bar.
Let me hit you with a hard truth: Traditional SEO is dying… Yep. I said it. And it’s not because Google is going away…it’s because we’re not searching the way we used to.
We’re asking questions in ChatGPT, shopping inside TikTok, and getting curated results in Perplexity, Arc, and even AI-enabled smart glasses. If your brand is still optimizing just for keywords and backlinks, you’re playing checkers in a world that’s moved on to 3D chess.
So let’s talk about what visibility looks like now and what to do about it.
enter the new search stack
Here’s the big shift: AI search is no longer based on crawling websites. It’s based on trained data, structured sources, and citations from known entities.
That means:
- What is where and how is what? Your website structure matters more than ever – remember those site maps we used to all love.
- The new “Off-Page” SEO is taking over: your LinkedIn profile, Google Scholar, YouTube descriptions, and podcast transcripts feed the LLMs. And all of it matters.
- AI isn’t ranking your blog post—it’s summarizing 10 it already read. Content + Content + Content means more opportunities to be chosen as the most correct answer to a question.
If you’re not feeding the AI with the right formats, structured signals, and context-rich metadata, you’re invisible in the new digital ecosystem.
AI wants things that Google never really cared about.
Here’s what I’m seeing across all client audits:
- Schema Markup
AI discovery gold. Tools like ChatGPT love it when your pages tell them what’s what. Use schema.org markup to tag your products, services, FAQs, and more. Be very clear and concise with your language so that it is easy to understand. - Content Attribution
Yes, this really matters now. If you’re guest posting, being featured someplace, or simply being quoted… make sure it links back to your author entity. AI seems to really care about the source. - Multimodal Signals
YouTube? Podcast? Infographic? AI is listening and watching. Cross-pollinate your content and optimize descriptions/titles as if they were metadata. This is where my tried and true “Rule of 5” comes into play. - Contextual Authority > Backlinks
Relevance beats raw domain rank. It’s better to be featured in a niche AI-curated answer set (like Perplexity or Poe) than to rank #3 on a broad keyword.
sooooo….how can you rank now?
train AI on you and your content
- Publish content that uses structured data
- Be present in public datasets (think: Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Google Business, GitHub, podcast transcripts)
- Use consistent naming conventions and bios across channels
build a multimodal footprint
- Create high-quality audio/video (AI can parse it!)
- Embed structured notes and timestamps
- Include downloadable content that adds context (guides, cheat sheets)
check your visibility
- Ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini: “Who are the top experts in [your field]?”
- Use prompts like “Best tools for [X]” to see if your product/service is showing up
- If it’s not, fix your data, content, and backlinks until it does
TLDR – Parting Words
You don’t need to panic, you just need to pivot.
AI didn’t kill SEO. It leveled it up.
We’re not optimizing for crawlers anymore. We’re optimizing for cognition, context and curation.
And if you do it right? You’ll show up before your competitors even load the page.
want to talk about your specific situation?
I’ll personally review how your brand performs across AI search, structured data, and visibility signals.
Connect with me here.
Let’s get your stack together before the bots forget you exist.
xo,
Shannon