What is AI SEO? A plain-language guide for founders

If you’re a founder, you’ve probably been told you need “AI SEO” by at least one agency, investor or LinkedIn post this year. It’s a real thing, but the label hides what the work actually is. This guide explains it without jargon, so you can decide how much of it you need and what to do first.

The short version

People increasingly ask AI tools for advice before they buy. Instead of ten blue links, they get one written answer that names a few brands. If your brand isn’t named, you’re not in the running for that buyer, however well you rank on Google.

AI SEO is everything you do to change that: making sure AI tools can read your site, giving them clear pages to quote, and making sure other websites describe you well, because AI answers lean heavily on what others say.

How AI assistants decide what to say

There are two ways an AI assistant can mention you. Understanding both explains almost everything else.

When ChatGPT searches, OpenAI says it “rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries” and sends them to search providers including Microsoft. Google’s AI Overviews use Google’s own index and may run several related searches for one question, a technique Google calls “query fan-out”. In both cases, the assistant reads the results and writes an answer from the most useful passages.

How AI SEO differs from SEO

The overlap is large, but rankings don’t carry over automatically. In Ahrefs’ study of 15,000 queries, only 12% of links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same query. And mentions matter more than links: branded web mentions correlated 0.664 with AI Overview visibility, three times more than backlinks.

If the acronyms confuse you, our AEO vs GEO vs SEO guide sorts them out. For practical purposes, they describe the same work.

Why it matters now

• Fewer clicks from search. In Pew Research’s study, people clicked a traditional result on 8% of Google visits that showed an AI summary, against 15% without one.
• Longer questions get AI answers. Pew found 60% of question-style searches produced an AI summary. Buying questions are usually long and specific.
• One answer, few brands. An AI answer typically names a handful of options. Being fourth on Google was still visible; being left out of the answer isn’t.
• It compounds. Mentions you earn today feed both live AI search and future models.

Who AI SEO matters most for

Every business with buyers who research online is affected, but some feel it sooner than others:

• B2B software and services, where buyers ask long comparison questions and shortlist from a handful of names.
• Consumer products with lots of research, like electronics, skincare, home goods and finance apps, where people ask “which one should I buy?”
• New companies in established categories, because AI answers default to the brands mentioned most across the web.
• Businesses whose traffic came from informational content, since AI summaries now answer many of those questions on the results page.

It matters least for businesses that win almost entirely on referrals, local foot traffic or direct sales relationships. Even then, a quick check of what AI says about you is worth an hour, because prospects increasingly ask AI about a company before a first call.

The four parts of AI SEO

1. Access: can AI read your site?

AI assistants use their own crawlers, and many sites block them by accident through robots.txt, CDN settings or pages that only load content with JavaScript. This is the fastest part to fix and the most damaging to get wrong. Our technical AI search checklist covers it in a day.

2. Pages: do you answer the question?

AI tools quote passages that answer specific questions. Comparison pages, alternatives pages, honest pricing pages and use-case pages are the ones that get cited for buying questions. Each section should answer its heading in the first sentence.

3. Mentions: what do others say about you?

Review sites, “best tools” roundups, Reddit threads, industry publications and partner pages are where AI assistants learn which brands to recommend. This is usually the biggest gap for newer companies, and the slowest to close.

4. Measurement: what does AI say today?

Search Console won’t tell you what ChatGPT says. You need a list of buyer prompts, checked regularly, plus AI referral traffic in your analytics. Our guide to tracking brand mentions in ChatGPT has a free method.

What actually works, and what doesn’t

The research supports this. In the GEO study from Princeton and IIT Delhi, adding statistics, quotations and source citations to content improved its visibility in AI answers, while keyword stuffing offered little improvement.

A worked example

Say you run a small company selling employee scheduling software for restaurants. You rank on page one of Google for “restaurant scheduling software”, and you get steady signups from it. Then a few prospects mention they found your competitor “through ChatGPT”.

You ask ChatGPT: “What’s the best scheduling app for a restaurant with 25 staff?” It names three competitors and cites a hospitality blog’s roundup, a review site category page, a Reddit thread from restaurant managers and one competitor’s comparison page. You’re in none of them.

That’s an AI SEO problem, and the fixes are concrete. You check your robots.txt and find nothing blocking ChatGPT. You write a fair comparison page against the competitor it named first. You email the roundup’s author with a short pitch about what you do for restaurants of that size. You ask a handful of happy customers for reviews on the review site. And you answer questions in the restaurant managers’ community, saying where you work. Two months later, you appear in the answer for the narrower versions of the question, and the roundup has added you.

Where to start this week

1. Ask the questions your buyers ask. Run 10 buyer questions in ChatGPT (with search on), Perplexity and Google. Note who’s named and which sources are cited.
2. Check access. Make sure robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, and that your CDN isn’t blocking them.
3. Verify Bing. ChatGPT search uses Microsoft among its providers. Bing Webmaster Tools also shows how often Copilot cites you.
4. Write one page. The comparison or alternatives page for the rival that shows up most in those answers.
5. Contact two roundup authors whose lists are cited but don’t include you.

That’s a few hours of work and it tells you more than most audits, because it shows you the real answers your buyers see. Repeat the question check monthly, on the same date, to see what changes.

How much time it takes

For a small company, that’s roughly a week of setup and a few hours a week after that. Most of the ongoing time goes on mentions, because that’s the part nobody can do in one sitting.

A quick glossary

What good results look like

Success in AI SEO isn’t one number going up. After three months of steady work, a healthy picture usually looks like this: you’re named for several of the specific buyer questions you tracked, your comparison or pricing page is cited as a source, a couple of roundups or review pages that AI cites now include you, and a small but engaged stream of visitors arrives from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. Broad “best X” questions may still favour bigger names. That’s normal, and it’s where steady work on mentions pays off over the following months.

Do you need an agency?

Not necessarily. A founder or one marketer can do the first month of work above. An agency helps when nobody has a few hours a week, when you’re in a crowded category, or when you need outreach and measurement done consistently. If you talk to agencies, our 12 questions to ask will separate real expertise from renamed SEO packages.

Common mistakes

• Treating it as a new channel to buy. It’s mostly about making your existing presence clear and findable.
• Only working on your own site. For “best tool” questions, other sites matter most.
• Tracking keywords instead of questions. Buyers ask AI in full sentences.
• Ignoring Bing. It’s part of how ChatGPT and Copilot find sources.
• Expecting overnight results. Technical fixes are fast; mentions take months.