The 13-point roadmap for thriving in the age of AI search

The AI revolution is transforming the search landscape rapidly, leaving traditional SEO tactics struggling to keep up. Here’s a 13-point roadmap to help you deal with changes caused by AI technologies. These include large language models, knowledge graphs, and conversational search engines. 

By adopting modern strategies, you can thrive in a world dominated by AI search and increasingly closed ecosystems.

What’s making traditional SEO a minor player

Over the past three years, search has undergone more upheaval than in the previous two decades combined. Traditional SEO tactics are struggling to keep pace, making it essential to embrace a modern approach.

To thrive in a world dominated by AI search and assistive engines, you’ll need to optimize for three core technologies:

• Traditional search engines.
• Large language models (LLMs).
• Knowledge graphs.

SEOs must now account for conversational search, generative AI, and their integration into a growing array of products.

While this might seem daunting, adapting your SEO mindset and strategies can ensure you stay ahead and help your clients and teams thrive.

1. Elevate your content’s credibility beyond the page

“Seth Godin said, ‘You are your work,’ and that may not be more true than in modern content SEO, where LLMs make content generation cheap. Google needs an anchor to determine whether a piece of content is trustworthy and valuable. The entity that is you is that anchor. Your work defines how heavy it is.”  — Dave Davies, Head of SEO, Weights & Biases

Traditional content and website-level optimization remain essential, but they are no longer sufficient on their own. 

Google now looks at more than just content. It also checks the trustworthiness of the people and companies behind it. This is done using E-E-A-T principles. This means Google is assessing the entire picture — content, authors, and publishers. If you’re not optimizing for these entities, you’re falling behind. 

To gain a competitive edge, you need to go beyond traditional SEO. You should add two more layers: content creator and publisher optimization.

• Secure Knowledge Panels for content creators.
• Secure Knowledge Panels for companies and key figures, such as the CEO.
• Use the hub-spoke-wheel model detailed below to take control.

Optimizing for these additional tiers already has an impact on rankings, visibility and algorithmic preference. As this trend grows, ignoring these layers of SEO will be increasingly detrimental.

2. Rebuild your approach to digital authority

“There are 97 billion triples extracted from 3.4 billion pages in the latest Web Data Commons report, which provides structured data from webpages. This data is crucial for refining entity disambiguation. A ‘linkless link’ can be as important as a traditional link for building credibility, provided that an AI system can properly disambiguate the entity.” — Andrea Volpini, CEO, WordLift 

Hyperlinks between webpages remain valuable for findability, prioritization and credibility. However, their direct influence on search engine performance — ranking, visibility, and recommendations — is diminishing.

Dig deeper: The two approaches to AI implementation: Collaboration vs. independence

If you’ve mastered entity understanding, focus on:

• Entity mentions in relevant contexts (linkless links).
• Stated relationships and attributes for entities across formats (text, video, audio, visuals).
• Credibility relationships expressed in content and links (topics, expertise, qualifications, awards).

Building these pillars gradually establishes meaningful entity-to-URL relationships, such as profile pages, authored content, media mentions and topic pages. This process is slow and difficult to measure, as knowledge acquisition takes time.

Using a proprietary measurement method, I’ve found that my personal entity, “Jason Barnard,” is explicitly linked to 480 unique URLs, driving significant visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Bing and other AI-driven platforms. Among tracked entities, our client “Scott Duffy” ranks second with 90 associated URLs. “Barry Schwartz” is third with 58.

This is only the beginning. 

Google and other AI platforms leverage named entities and their relationships to:

• Better understand content.
• Identify the “who” behind it.
• Evaluate credibility at the content, creator and publisher levels.

Note: Even for content, links are losing their importance.

The Google leak in May 2024 showed that some pages are more valueable because of their connection to other pages (relatedPage) and use as a reference (isReferencePage). Our data shows that inbound links help a page attain the status of a reference page or related page, but they are optional.

3. Craft conversations, not just keywords

“The concept of keyword has changed in SEO. Focus on words that are key. It’s now used to connect with user intent across the buying funnel, converting users while remaining clear for search engines and training LLMs to offer accurate insights.” — Mariana Franco, Founder, BrilliantSEO

The words people use to initiate a search remain important as the starting point. However, in a world where users transition between search, generative and assistive engines, three shifts are occurring:

• Search queries are evolving to become more specific and nuanced.
• After the initial query, users are drawn into a conversational funnel where keywords are replaced by exchanges.
• Engines like Google, Bing Generative SERP, ChatGPT and others are becoming walled gardens. They keeping use within their ecosystems and move away from traditional sequences of keyword-based queries.

This means traditional keyword-focused strategies are no longer enough. 

These platforms shape conversations that marketers won’t see. So your focus must shift to creating a broader, brand-focused marketing strategy for both engines and your audience.

• Use language your audience naturally searches for.
• Align content with the intent of the initial query and its logical progression.
• Adopt vocabulary that resonates, engages and inspires trust.
• Maintain consistent, on-brand language across all channels.
• Create context clouds in your content with relevant terms.
• Clearly communicate entity attributes and relationships.
• Structure your content ecosystem to define an intuitive consumer journey.
• Include clear next steps for the user within each piece of content.
• Prioritize clear, accessible communication to effectively convey your message.

 4. Build a multi-modal content strategy

“SEO relied on the written word because initially the cost/performance element of SEs (and their accuracy) didn’t allow for anything beyond it and the slow-loading time of media pages couldn’t hold audience attention. We’re now in a world of fast connections and rich-media enabled devices. Written content plays an ever-diminishing, supporting role at best.” — David Amerland, SEO strategist

Written content is losing its dominance, with Google introducing new SERP features and rich elements such as:

• Carousels. 
• Video boxes. 
• Image boxes.
• Knowledge panels.
• Entity lists. 

As Google and Bing become increasingly multimodal, expect to see fewer website text results. These rich elements will dominate even more in the coming years as multimedia processing improves.

Dig deeper: A co-pilot approach to genAI (with prompt examples)

However, this doesn’t mean you should stop creating written content. Focus on:

• Building a comprehensive FAQ section that addresses questions at every stage of your funnel (starting with brand queries at the bottom and moving upward).
• Developing a detailed About page to establish who you are, what you offer, and why you’re the most credible solution.
• Creating content to bridge information gaps.

Written content will remain essential, but its value will shift to being implicit. It will be less visible to users while powering results in the background.

5. Redefine your visibility beyond traditional results

Gary Illyes from Google and Frédéric Dubut from Bing have confirmed that blue links remain the foundation of search results. 

While this is encouraging, their presence and influence are steadily diminishing. Like written content, blue links are becoming more implicit. They power the technologies generating results rather than being the visible results themselves.

For marketers, blue links have traditionally been the gateway from search engines to content. Now, it’s crucial to rethink your strategy:

• Aim to occasionally secure direct blue link appearances in search results (a short-term strategy).
• Focus on influencing chatbot platforms like ChatGPT, which now integrate real-time search results (a mid-term strategy).
• Use detailed webpages to guide every step of your funnel, enabling walled-garden engines to natively connect users to your solutions (a long-term strategy).

Relying on blue links solely for visibility and traffic is an unsustainable approach.

Note: “Cascading queries” is a process where, starting from the user’s initial search query, the search engine generates and analyzes a series of additional queries to deliver the final results. 

These behind-the-scenes cascading queries rely on blue links, but the user does not see them. They function as implicit blue links.

Examples of cascading queries include:

• Google’s Learn About.
• Generative SERP elements that answer follow-up questions in Bing and Bing Deep Search.

6. Optimize your on-SERP brand presence 

Google and Bing are increasingly transforming the SERP into walled gardens.  This shift cannot be ignored. The move toward generative SERPs and assistive engines is accelerating, making an on-SERP SEO strategy essential. 

Here’s what you need to do:

• Diversify your focus: Optimize not only for traditional blue links but also for knowledge elements, multimedia features like videos and images and on-SERP generative results.
• Capture user attention: With user attention becoming the most valuable online currency, on-SERP SEO is critical for seizing this opportunity.
• Enhance brand presence: Prioritize getting your brand name and narrative onto the SERP through entity optimization, building N-E-E-A-T-T credibility, and refining your brand’s web-wide digital footprint.

7. Extend your brand visibility across digital touchpoints

SEOs must fundamentally rethink their approach to websites.  Websites are no longer the primary portal and will continue to diminish in importance. Instead, they are just one of many channels where you need to maintain an active and effective presence.

To adapt, implement these three primary strategies:

Think beyond the website

• Optimize your presence on platforms where your audience naturally spends time, such as social media, review sites, and forums. 
• Focus on managing these platforms directly to ensure you meet your audience where they are.

Ensure consistency across all platforms 

• As search-driven website traffic declines, prioritize consistent brand communication across all touchpoints throughout the funnel.

Use your website as a central hub

• The website remains critical for conversions and is the only fully controlled channel for your brand narrative.
• Its future role will be as a central hub that connects and integrates your web-wide digital marketing strategy for both humans and machines.

8. Build a brand that machines understand and trust

Now is the time to detach emotionally from the importance of domains because, in the future, domains will matter far less than brands. Well-developed, optimized personal and corporate brands will dominate search and assistive engine results. 

Dig deeper: Why personality data is key to scalable B2B marketing

The ability to build a brand that machines confidently understand and perceive as credible will soon be paramount. All other things being equal, this favors larger brands and famous individuals with strong existing brand presence.

However, the career of every SEO is founded on the promise that we ensure all other things are not equal.

Smaller personal and corporate brands can carve out a place by working smarter. Focus on these three key areas:

• Entity understanding
  • Ensure Google and other big tech platforms understand your brand. 
  • Your primary KPI today is achieving a Google Knowledge Panel. Without this foundational understanding, you’re not even in the game.
• Brand credibility
  • Build credibility using N-E-E-A-T-T principles and establishing topical authority. 
  • Your KPI here is appearing in “best of” entity lists.
• Branded niche content
  • Develop niche content tailored to your funnel. 
  • Your KPI is citations in Google’s AI Overviews.

If algorithms don’t understand your brand, they cannot evaluate your credibility.  Without being perceived as a more credible solution than competitors, your visibility in search results will gradually decline. 

Entity understanding is the cornerstone of future success. So the most important brand KPI today is building an information-rich Knowledge Panel. However, be cautious about building your entity understanding primarily through Google and its properties. 

These platforms are excellent for feeding data directly to Google. However, they only indirectly influence other engines like ChatGPT, Bing, Meta, Alexa, Siri and Perplexity.  Over-relying on Google’s walled garden risks leaving your brand behind in broader search and assistive engine ecosystems.

9. Transform how you signal entity information 

“Google accumulates information through aggregation because single points of truth have proven to be unreliable” — Jarno van Driel, schema markup advocate 

Schema markup is not a magic bullet for entity optimization, getting into the Knowledge Graph or securing a Knowledge Panel. Consider the fate of the keywords meta tag: search engines stopped accepting publishers as the single source of truth for keywords long before it was officially abandoned in 2009. 

Today, Google’s knowledge algorithms are designed to corroborate information rather than rely solely on the publisher’s input. Schema markup serves as an explicit confirmation of what knowledge algorithms infer from implicit semantics. It’s just one small part of the puzzle. 

Dig deeper: Will big tech burst the AI bubble?

To validate facts before using them in search results or fact-checking AI models, Google evaluates three implicit signals:

• Its understanding of webpage content using LLMs and SLMs.
• Relationships to other known entities and insights derived from cohort analysis.
• Corroboration from multiple trusted sources across the web.

Even a flawless schema markup won’t guarantee inclusion in the Knowledge Graph or a Knowledge Panel if your information isn’t supported by clear, complete, on-page content and corroborated by multiple sources.

Your website plays a crucial role as the entity home. It’s Google’s primary source of information about the entity from the entity itself. This data is corroborated in a process called reconciliation. (John Mueller has confirmed that the entity home + reconciliation approach is correct.)

To implement this effectively, adopt a hub-spoke-wheel model:

• Hub: Build a solid entity home with clear, well-structured information.
• Spokes: Use links (or sameAs in schema) to point to corroborative sources.
• Wheel: Ensure all corroborative information is clear, consistent and aligned.

10. Master the art of entity optimization

By 2025, a knowledge panel on Google will be the baseline requirement for competing in search. However, entity optimization for search goes far beyond this foundation. It involves a wide array of strategies designed to increase visibility in search, educate knowledge algorithms and feed LLMs. 

Here are some examples of entity optimization you might not yet be considering:

• Product/service entities: Use schema and your Google Merchant feed to leverage product entities now. In the long term, aim to control your product entities within the Knowledge Graph.
• WebPage entities: Hyperlinks between webpages create explicit entity relationships — keep doing that. But to stay competitive, start building implicit relationship-based links for topics, people, products and corporations (e.g., isReferencePage and isRelated attributes).
• Entity mentions: Pay attention to mentions of known entities. These function as linkless links and are critical for relationship building.
• Topic entities: Establish connections between topic entities (e.g., SEO, economics, engineering) and your person, organization or WebPage entities.
• Mutual entity support: Strengthen relationships between related entities. For example, credibility for a Person entity boosts the associated Corporation entity, and vice versa. The same applies to relationships between books and their authors.
• Cohort entities: According to a Google leak in May 2024, Google uses algorithmically defined cohort entities to group entities like Person, Corporation, Topic, CreativeWork and Event. Entity optimization requires ensuring your entity belongs to the correct cohort.

Entity optimization is a massive opportunity for building a network of relationships that dominate the SERPs. The solution lies in the hub-spoke-wheel model outlined in the previous point.

11. Rethink how you build credibility

Links are valuable but outdated. Link building is now just a small part of the puzzle for businesses or individuals with long-term ambitions (see Point 2). Links are secondary now that Google can identify content creator and publisher entities and connect them to pages and topics.

Dig deeper: Customer experience management in the age of agentic AI

Here’s what you can do:

Amplify existing N-E-E-A-T-T signals

• Focus on maximizing the notability, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, and transparency you already have. 
• Audit your career or corporate history to identify achievements that demonstrate these qualities. 
• Then, create content on your Entity Home website to present this information clearly and credibly.
• Examples:
  • Instead of simply stating “I was CEO of WTPL Music for 9 years,” enhance your N-E-E-A-T-T by adding, “As CEO of WTPL Music, I signed deals with EMI and Warner.” 
  • Similarly, for UpToTen: “As CEO, I collaborated with Sir Tony Robinson, signed deals with Lagardere, and secured a production deal with ITV International that aired on Playhouse Disney.”

Prioritize understandability and credibility

• These pages are not about ranking but about ensuring the information is easily understood and highly credible.

Include outlinks

• Link to authoritative third-party webpages that corroborate your claims. Hoarding link equity is counterproductive; outlinks enhance credibility and are the key to a healthy entity digital footprint.

Focus on amplification before expansion

• Fully optimize and amplify your existing N-E-E-A-T-T signals before building out new ones. 
• For most individuals and corporations, this process will take months.

Forget outdated metrics

• Metrics like domain authority, brand authority and other link-based measures are relics of the past. 
• While they may serve as “eye candy” for those clinging to outdated link-based approaches, they hold little weight in a world dominated by AI.

To achieve sustainable, cross-platform results, optimize webpages to reinforce understanding, build credibility and enhance deliverability.

12. Design content for conversational discovery

ChatGPT has made a significant impact but hasn’t become the “SERP killer” many feared.  Instead, it has normalized conversational interactions between users and machines, centering on the acquisition funnel. Focus on that. To succeed, optimize for the off-site, conversational, no-click SERP.

This means moving beyond keywords to focus on:

• Jumping off queries.
• Research paths.
• Integrating into the machine-driven acquisition funnel conversation.

Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Alexa and other AI-powered tools aim to guide users efficiently to solutions. Content with detailed, accurate information and follow-up answers increase your visibility across the funnel, enhancing your personal or corporate brand.

Here is an illustrative example on Bing Copilot:

Note: Fabrice Canel suggested 18 months ago that SEOs should consider optimizing for Bing Copilot’s conversational funnel.

Taking this advice, I applied the strategies shared here to create impactful results in under a year.

13. Expand your visibility across platforms

“Search is now multi-modal and multi-channel. Users can now search using text, voice, images and even video and its becoming more and more conversational. Continued investment in optimising the entities for your brand and your key subject matter experts will pay dividends wherever search engines, chatbots or other apps are utilising LLMs.” — Laurence O’Toole, CEO, Authoritas

Being a one-trick “Google Pony” is no longer an option. Relying solely on traditional search rankings is a failing strategy. While Google remains dominant in search, search itself is losing its grip as the primary interface.

You must strategize for search, answer and assistive (SAA) engines:

• Search engines: AI-powered SERP features like Google’s AI Overview and Bing’s Generative Search.
• Answer engines: Platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Learn About.
• Assistive engines: Integrated tools like CoPilot on PCs, platforms like Zapier, and software such as Canva, Gmail, Excel, Alexa, and Siri.

To succeed, embrace and educate all the bots. 

A strategic framework for modern SEO

Here’s a framework to ensure every action tactic and strategy you implement has a meaningful impact.

Do not read it line by line or one option per column. This is a multidimensional grid designed to guide strategic thinking.

To highlight the limitations of traditional SEO, note its simplistic focus on content deliverability in search. 

Start on the left and ask yourself:

• Which entities does my action support?
• For those entities, what does my action improve?
• Which technologies does this action serve?

Any single action (site speed improvements, content creation, transcripts, visuals, etc.) can support one or more elements in each category. By systematically working from left to right, every action contributes positively to control, influence, and visibility in modern SEO.

Traditional SEO focused on a single combination: content → deliverability → search.  However, modern SEO requires a broader approach. 

Actions should:

• Support one or all of content, content creator or content publisher.
• Optimize for one or more of understandability, credibility or deliverability.
• Improve performance in one or more of search, chatbots or Knowledge Graphs.

While some exceptional actions may serve all nine areas, most will benefit four to six. 

No action should serve fewer than one in each column.

Conclusion

SEOs must embrace a paradigm shift, moving beyond traditional search-centric strategies to a holistic approach that integrates multimodal AI. 

Success now requires simultaneous optimization for search engines, large language models and knowledge graphs, with a focus on improving understandability, credibility and deliverability for content, content creators and content publishers.

The future of information retrieval and problem-solving is shifting away from user-driven, search-based interactions to seamless integrations across platforms and interfaces.  With the right mindset and strategies, SEOs can adapt their skill sets to achieve results far beyond Google search, tapping into the potential of conversational AI and integrated AI technologies.

To thrive in this new era, SEOs must move beyond content-level, search-based tactics. 

Every tool and platform — whether Google Search, ChatGPT, Alexa or Siri — relies on three core technologies: search engines, LLMs and knowledge graphs.  Every action you take must align with these technologies by enhancing at least one of understandability, credibility or deliverability for content, creators or publishers. 

This is the path forward for modern SEO.

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