AI SEO Isn’t Optional Anymore

What AI SEO means and why bots crawling your site is actually a good thing

Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash

For over a decade, I’ve been turning to MaAnna Stephenson for straight-up, no-fluff tech advice.

She’s my go-to guru regarding website performance, security, and staying ahead of what’s coming next.

In this guest post, MaAnna explains what AI SEO really means, why it matters now, and how you can adjust your content strategy to stay visible in search results that are no longer solely driven by Google.

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What is AI SEO?

It means to optimize your content for AI Search.

That includes ensuring you have snippets of info that can be featured in AI summaries and a link to your site for further information.

Think of it as Google Snippets or Featured Posts on steroids.

AI Search Engines

There are a LOT more of them than you may realize!

The top 3 most popular AI Search Engines include:

• Google AI Overviews - aka Google AIO - found in regular Google Search.

• GPTSearch - from OpenAI, and found inside ChatGPT

• Perplexity - which is a hybrid of frozen and current content that is known for accurate, deep research on topics

AI Overviews appear for up to 47% of searches (source)

Other AI Search Engines include:

• Google Gemini

• Microsoft/Bing CoPilot

• Grok

• Claude

And there are about 6 more that you’ve likely never heard of, and will likely never use. I’m not sure they will have deep enough pockets to stay in this game.

AI Summaries are Helpful

Every year, more searchers get their info from AI or AI Overviews, not just Google.

That’s because they find short summaries far more helpful for previewing information than scrolling through clickbait post titles with hyped-up meta descriptions.

This is especially true since Google released its Helpful Content Update, which effectively removed most independent publisher blog posts from Page 1 of the SERPs (Search Results Pages).

This is also why Perplexity is still among the top 3 AI search engines, despite Google and OpenAI throwing billions of dollars into their AI projects.

Perplexity just gives far better and deeper results, with links to every result. It’s almost like old Google, when that Search Engine actually displayed the best posts and was not filled with ads.

More Eyeballs on Your Content

“SEO is not just about being found. It's about being found and chosen.”
~Andy Crestodina

Google recently reported that 1.5 billion search users see AIO (AI Overview) search results every month!! That’s a LOT of eyeballs on the content featured in their AIO sections on Page 1 of Search.

You can also see the AI Search Engines sending you traffic right in your Google Analytics 4.

My clients and I have been reporting AI Search traffic has been increasing all year.

The best part about that traffic is that visitors tend to linger on our sites longer and/or click through to more pages and posts.

AI Bot Crawlers

When AI hit the scene a few years ago, some site owners blocked all AI scraper bots because they did not want those AI models trained on their content.

I saw this as a mistake and advised my clients to allow AI bots to crawl their content.

Allowing AI scraper bots is the ONLY way for your content to appear in AI Search.

If you use Cloudflare, and I hope you do, there is a way to see exactly what AI scraper bots are hitting your site and the content they’re accessing.

And if you have access to your hosting resource information, you can also see if those bots are taking a toll on your resources. To date, I have not seen a resource issue that concerns me, even when there are up to 43,000 AI crawls in a 24-hour period.

Audit Your Content for AI SEO

The days of writing 1500-2000 word authoritative articles to please Google are over.

The days of hiding helpful tips inside those long articles are over, too.

Shorter, focused content is the key now.

You can also link it to longer-form content so readers can get a deeper story if they like.

You can also use tools to have AI summarize your content to see what the bots key on. That’s a handy way to ensure you’re not guessing at what parts of your long-form content are worth pulling out as short-form content.

AI SEO Applies to Videos Too

Short, focused tip videos dominate every video platform now.

And every one of those platforms has its own AI search algorithm in play.

In fact, it’s so helpful that Google, which owns YouTube, is bringing its AI Overviews to the platform.

These short summaries will be far more helpful than a thumbnail with a clickbait title, especially on Shorts that may have no words on their cover image.

Get in the Know with AI SEO

AI-driven search is already here and shaping how people find your content.

If you want to stay visible and keep growing your traffic (a.k.a grow your business), it’s time to rethink how you write, structure, and share your posts and videos.

Start small.

Test what shows up in summaries.

Pay attention to your analytics.

And most of all, stay curious. This shift is just getting started.

If you’re ready to get serious about making AI SEO work for you, check out MaAnna’s DIY SEO Everywhere course. Learn how to see what’s working and AI Search visits to your site on Google Analytics 4 (GA4), with MaAnna’s course, EZ Metrics.

Got questions for MaAnna? Post them in the comment thread below 👇