Artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the way users find brands and convert into leads. Search engines, assistants, and copilots now summarize, cite, and make recommendations for readers.

These new systems collect information from various sources across the web. They use data from sites, knowledge graph signals, product feeds, and third-party references to form answers to queries.

So if your brand isn’t a source in a user’s query, your overall site visibility may go down (meaning fewer leads). But the right approach to your content strategy, search visibility can turn into growth for your brand.

Innovative Content With AI Optimization

Having “AI-optimized” content means getting answers to potential leads’ questions in fewer, or even zero clicks. This includes:

Quality and structure with clear hierarchy, scannable paragraphs, consistent formatting, and cited sources.
Natural, conversational language to write how people ask. Anticipate questions, objections, and tasks AI needs to complete on a user’s behalf.
Specificity and usefulness with solution-forward content that addresses real pain points.
Rich media with context, including images, charts, and video with transcripts, alt text, and captions.
Internal links to connect related assets and pages.

Sound familiar? These methods are already intertwined with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. Features like Google snippets have existed for many years, and the rollout of AI systems and AI overviews (AIOs) is just another industry shift.

But this time around with generative AI in search, SEO experts have to consider the likelihood of users not clicking into a site. Some have even coined the term generative engine optimization (GEO).

What to Implement into Your Content Strategy

AI assistants prefer clear, organized, and up-to-date content that matches user intent. The following items strengthen your current and future content strategy, and have been standard long before today’s GEO:

Content Audits: Inventory of assets (mapped to intents) and gaps.
Knowledge Architecture: Schema markup, entities, and internal linking.
Consistent Production: Editorial calendar, briefs, style guides, and workflows.
Social Media: Social media calendar and style guides.
Editorial Cadence: Scheduled updates for pricing, integrations, and regulations.
Feedback Loops: User and sales feedback, performance signals, and reports.

Google’s guidelines state that their ranking system rewards high-quality content that demonstrates Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), whether it’s produced by AI or not.

But how does an AI system grade content? Google uses the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) AI system to understand user intent. Similarly, Microsoft’s Bing has implemented their Copilot system (run on the Prometheus model) to help users with AI-assisted search.

It’s always best to have an expert who understands these systems and signals to curate your content.

How can I optimize my content?

Intuitive Design

Begin with a user-centric lens. Identify what visitors are searching for, the intent behind their queries, and the paths that lead them to your pages. Then align your content to those needs so users quickly find what they came for and understand the value each page provides.

User (buyer) intent is split up into three types:

Informational: With FAQs and how-to guides that address common questions. (‘How can I create quality content?’)
Navigational: With logical structures and internal links that guide exploration. (‘Types of quality web content’)
Transactional: With concise product or service benefits paired with clear calls to action (CTAs). (‘Quality content agencies’).

An intuitive page helps both visitors and crawlers understand where they are, why the page matters, and how to move forward smoothly. A clear purpose, organized hierarchy, and accurate labeling cut down on guesswork. This leads to quicker and easier access to information.

General Strong UX and Site Performance

Effective user experience and site performance begin with mobile responsiveness, clear navigation, and accessibility. So you still need to use descriptive alt text, compliant color contrast, semantic structure, and keyboard-friendly interactions.

To support these standards, we at City Ranked have been shifting some builds to WordPress’ native Gutenberg blocks. This change reduces our reliance on heavy page builders and makes markups simpler. Also, this approach has resulted in leaner pages, faster load times, and more consistent performance across devices.

Strong Page Structure

Let’s bring it back to basics: a clear, logical heading hierarchy remains essential. And structure supports comprehension.

LLMs are now trained to interpret the structure and hierarchy of pages, and platforms, such as Gemini, Bing, and Copilot have integrated LLM capabilities into their search engines. So clear headings create organized sections and provide useful context.

More specifically, bulleted and numbered lists make key points scannable for readers and easier for language models to interpret. FAQs’ direct question-to-answer format is easy for users to understand and for automated systems to parse.

Schema Markup

Today’s models leverage structured data like schema markup for more accurate and context-rich outputs. LLMs gather schema markup during their data collection and use it as part of their training process.

So a precise and complete schema, showing clear entities, relationships, and attributes, remains crucial.

Local SEO

Effective local SEO is built on these fundamentals:

Accurate, actively managed Google Business Profiles (GBPs).
Consistent name, address, and phone (NAP) details across your website and third-party listings.
Implementation basics, like placing NAP information in crawlable page text rather than images.

These practices help LLMs reliably understand and match your business information across the web.

Learn more about our proprietary local SEO solution here.

How is creating content for AI platforms different from SEO?

SEO isn’t going away. AI just adds new rules, including explicit claims and citations, entity clarity, and answer-first formatting.

Will AI summaries reduce our site traffic?

Some have seen fewer clicks, but better-qualified visits (almost as a trade-off). Agencies, like City Ranked, optimize for inclusion, citations, and boosting conversions.

LLMs vs AI: What’s the Difference?

“AI” covers many things, and is a term that’s been around for a long time. AI platforms are distribution systems, such as AI Overviews, Copilot, and Perplexity.

Large language models (LLMs) are a specific type of AI system that generates and retrieves text. LLMs consume content for summarization and retrieval.

Why Creating Content for LLMs Matters

Users can now find answers to questions, like product recommendations, without needing to visit a website. So getting more traffic, leads, and clicks means creating content for AI platforms and LLMs.

Inclusion in AI summaries gets brands higher in cited sources. So the right AI-optimized content:

Improves click-through rate (CTR) with answer-first formatting.
Shortens time-to-value with improved internal linking and structured data.
Moves leads down the pipeline from mid-funnel assets.

Brands that are ahead of results present their knowledge in a way that algorithms understand and users find useful. The entire journey from first AI summary to consideration to conversion has to be at the core of your strategy.

That’s a job for your marketing team – but bringing in a team of experts can streamline this process for you.

Let Us Build Your Content Strategy

You need a content engine that excels in AI-enhanced search, social media, and web platforms. We’re a team of passionate digital marketers who produce high-converting content. Our full-funnel approach turns AI-ready into real revenue. It starts with awareness in AI overviews and leads to conversions.

City Ranked combines user-focused strategy with data-driven action and transparency. This way, you see real results. You’ll know what we’re doing, why it matters, and how it’s performing.

Ready to capture this next wave of AI-driven demand? We’ll provide you a growth plan, innovative ideas to keep you ahead, and transparency to retain your trust. Schedule a strategy session with us today and see where you can win on the web.

Why You Should Create and Optimize Content for AI Platforms