[00:00] Hey everyone, my name is Samo and welcome to the&nbsp; answer engine optimization or AEO course by HRS.&nbsp;&nbsp; In this course, I'll be teaching you how to get&nbsp; traffic from AI search and to get more brand&nbsp;&nbsp; visibility in it. This course will have a heavy&nbsp; focus on execution. And while the topic might&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:15] be new to many of you, I don't want you to feel&nbsp; intimidated, especially if you have a background&nbsp;&nbsp; in SEO because SEO is the foundation of AEO. Now,&nbsp; here's why you need to pay attention to this right&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:28] now. As of December 2025, the presence of an AI&nbsp; overview on Google reduces the click-through rate&nbsp;&nbsp; for the number one ranking page by 58%. That means&nbsp; for every 100 clicks you used to get, Google now&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:40] keeps 58 of them. Chat GPT alone has 900 million&nbsp; weekly users. It handles roughly 12% of Google&nbsp;&nbsp; search volume. And AI traffic to websites has&nbsp; grown 9.7 times in the past year. So, you can&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:53] either ignore the shift and watch your traffic&nbsp; shrink while raising your fist at the clouds,&nbsp;&nbsp; or you can learn how it works and capitalize on&nbsp; it. Because here's the thing most people miss.&nbsp;&nbsp; In June 2025, AI search accounted for just 0.5%&nbsp; of our traffic, but it drove 12.1% of our signups.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:12] That's a 23 times higher conversion rate than&nbsp; organic search. Search has changed and it's no&nbsp;&nbsp; longer just about clicks because AI traffic is&nbsp; one of the highest converting channels we've&nbsp;&nbsp; ever seen. So, let's start with the basics. In&nbsp; this first lesson, I'm going to explain what&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:27] AEO actually is, why it matters, and give you&nbsp; a road map for the entire course so you know&nbsp;&nbsp; exactly what's coming. So, what is answer engine&nbsp; optimization? AEO or answer engine optimization&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:40] is the practice of making your content visible and&nbsp; useful to AI systems that deliver direct answers.&nbsp;&nbsp; That's Google AI overviews, ChatGBT, Perplexity,&nbsp; Gemini, Copilot, basically any platform where&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:53] AI is generating a response and choosing who to&nbsp; site. You'll also hear this called GEO, generative&nbsp;&nbsp; engine optimization, or LLMO, large language model&nbsp; optimization. They all mean essentially the same&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:05] thing. So, we'll use AEO throughout this course.&nbsp; Now, you might be wondering, how is this different&nbsp;&nbsp; from traditional SEO? Well, in traditional&nbsp; SEO, you optimize web pages to rank higher&nbsp;&nbsp; in a list of search results. You're competing&nbsp; for positions. The user sees your blue link,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:21] clicks it, and lands on your site. In AEO, there&nbsp; is no list. The AI reads from dozens of sources,&nbsp;&nbsp; synthesizes an answer, and decides who to mention&nbsp; or site. You're not competing for a position,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:34] you're competing for a mention. And the rules&nbsp; for getting mentioned are a bit different&nbsp;&nbsp; from the rules for ranking in organic blue link&nbsp; results. Now, we'll break down exactly how that&nbsp;&nbsp; works in module one. But for now, the key thing&nbsp; to understand is this. AEO doesn't replace SEO.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:50] It builds on top of it. Think of SEO as your&nbsp; foundation and AEO as futureproofing your&nbsp;&nbsp; online presence. The fundamentals still matter.&nbsp; quality content, authority, technical health,&nbsp;&nbsp; but the strategy needs to evolve because&nbsp; the way people find information is changing.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:06] Now, I know some of you might be thinking, "Is AI&nbsp; just going to kill SEO completely?" And I get it,&nbsp;&nbsp; but this is not the end of SEO. Ethan Smith from&nbsp; Graphite talked about the zero sum bias on HR's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:18] podcast, and this is a cognitive bias based on&nbsp; the assumption that if something new goes up,&nbsp;&nbsp; something old must go down. And we saw the exact&nbsp; same thing in 2010 when the app store blew up.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:31] Everyone said, "The web is going away. Mobile apps&nbsp; are taking over. Only old people use websites."&nbsp;&nbsp; And yes, mobile apps did blow up. That promise&nbsp; was real. But the web didn't die. It grew&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:43] alongside these apps. AI search is likely going&nbsp; to be the same story. It is growing fast. Those&nbsp;&nbsp; numbers I just showed you are real. But Google&nbsp; still processes billions of searches per day.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:55] Traditional organic traffic still drives massive&nbsp; business value. So, the smart move isn't to panic,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's to play both games. And let me be real&nbsp; with you, most businesses haven't even started&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:08] thinking about this. We looked at HF's own data&nbsp; and found that our content and product pages have&nbsp;&nbsp; been mentioned 7,470 times across 2,39 pages in&nbsp; AI search without any effort to optimize for it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:23] That's all happening organically because we've&nbsp; been doing solid SEO and creating content that&nbsp;&nbsp; people find useful. Now, imagine what happens when&nbsp; you actually start intentionally optimizing for&nbsp;&nbsp; this. When you know which platforms site&nbsp; what, when you understand how AI decides&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:40] who to recommend when you're actively building the&nbsp; signals that make AI want to mention your brand.&nbsp;&nbsp; That's exactly what this course will teach you.&nbsp; The course is broken down into four modules plus&nbsp;&nbsp; this introduction. Module one is about how AI&nbsp; search actually works. We'll cover the mechanics,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:57] how AI finds content, how it decides what to site,&nbsp; how different platforms like Chat GBT, Google AI&nbsp;&nbsp; overviews, and Perplexity actually differ from&nbsp; each other, and what AI visibility actually looks&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:09] like for different types of businesses. This is&nbsp; the foundation that makes everything else make&nbsp;&nbsp; sense. Module two is all about strategy. I'll show&nbsp; you the data behind why brand mentions are the&nbsp;&nbsp; single strongest lever for AI visibility, stronger&nbsp; than backlinks, domain rating, or anything else.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:26] You'll learn keyword research for AEO, prompt&nbsp; research, and how to figure out where your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; stands versus competitors. Module three is about&nbsp; execution. This is where the actual work happens.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:38] How to create content that gets cited, how to earn&nbsp; mentions and citations for other sites, YouTube&nbsp;&nbsp; optimization for AI visibility, which no other&nbsp; course covers, and the technical stuff to make&nbsp;&nbsp; sure AI can actually find and crawl your content.&nbsp; In module four is about measurement. You'll learn&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:55] how to set up your analytics for AI traffic, how&nbsp; to run competitive audits to find your brand gaps,&nbsp;&nbsp; and how to evaluate whether AEO is actually worth&nbsp; the investment for your business. By the end of&nbsp;&nbsp; the course, you should be able to put together&nbsp; a concrete action plan that's bespoke for your&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:11] business with workflows to actually do this stuff&nbsp; immediately. All right, so that's the lay of the&nbsp;&nbsp; land. In the next lesson, we're diving straight&nbsp; into how AI search engines actually find and site&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:23] content, including the concept of query fan out,&nbsp; which is probably the single most important thing&nbsp;&nbsp; to understand about why AI search works the way&nbsp; that it does. I'll see you in the next lesson.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hey, it's Samo and welcome to the first module&nbsp; which is on how AI search actually works. In this&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:39] lesson, I'm going to walk you through the three&nbsp; things you need to understand about how AI search&nbsp;&nbsp; engines find, evaluate, and site content. Because&nbsp; here's the thing, if you don't understand how AI&nbsp;&nbsp; search works under the hood, every optimization&nbsp; tip you hear is just going to feel like a random&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:57] list of tactics. And I don't want that for&nbsp; you. I want you to understand the why behind&nbsp;&nbsp; every strategy we cover in this course. Let's&nbsp; get started. So where does AI actually get its&nbsp;&nbsp; information? This is probably the most important&nbsp; distinction to understand. AI search engines have&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:13] two sources of information and they work very&nbsp; differently. The first is training data. This&nbsp;&nbsp; is the massive collection of text that the AI was&nbsp; originally trained on. So books, websites, PDFs,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:25] social media, YouTube transcripts, basically a&nbsp; snapshot of the internet. So when you ask ChatGpt,&nbsp;&nbsp; "Who is the CEO of Apple?" and it instantly&nbsp; says Tim Cook without searching anything,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:38] that's coming from training data. It already&nbsp; learned that pattern. But here's the problem&nbsp;&nbsp; with training data. It's static. It gets updated&nbsp; maybe every 6 months or so. So if you launched&nbsp;&nbsp; your product last week, the AI doesn't know&nbsp; about it yet. not from training data at least.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:54] And that's where the second source comes in, real&nbsp; time retrieval. This is where rag or retrieval&nbsp;&nbsp; augmented generation comes into play. It sounds&nbsp; complicated, but Patrick Stock said it best.&nbsp;&nbsp; Uh then you've got the the retrieved pages, which&nbsp; is like a secondary process. So you've got the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:09] the trained LLM data and then you've got the data&nbsp; where it goes out and fetches a bunch of relevant&nbsp;&nbsp; pages and those come with other probabilities.&nbsp; For example, when ChatGpt or Google's AI mode&nbsp;&nbsp; needs fresh information, or when the question&nbsp; is too specific for training data alone,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:25] it goes out, it searches the web using APIs, it&nbsp; pulls back a bunch of pages, reads through them,&nbsp;&nbsp; and then generates a response based on what&nbsp; it found. Now, why does this matter for you?&nbsp;&nbsp; Because it means there are two ways to influence&nbsp; what AI says about your brand. The first is to be&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:42] mentioned so widely across the web that you're&nbsp; baked into the training data itself. And second&nbsp;&nbsp; is to make sure your content shows up when the&nbsp; AI searches the web in real time. And guess what?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:54] We already know how to do that. That's SEO. The&nbsp; skills you already have from traditional SEO,&nbsp;&nbsp; ranking in Google, earning backlinks, creating&nbsp; quality content, those directly influence&nbsp;&nbsp; whether AI picks up your pages during real-time&nbsp; retrieval. Now, here's where it gets interesting.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:10] The AI doesn't just search for the exact thing you&nbsp; typed in. Let me explain. Search engines used to&nbsp;&nbsp; work one to one. One query, one set of results.&nbsp; Then they evolved to many to one where different&nbsp;&nbsp; queries like Sydney plumber and plumbing service&nbsp; in Sydney could return the same results. But AI&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:28] search has flipped the model to one to many. One&nbsp; search gets expanded into many. And this technique&nbsp;&nbsp; is called query fo. For example, when someone&nbsp; enters a prompt like, "Plan me a 5-day trip to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:41] Japan in November." The AI fans it out into dozens&nbsp; of smaller longtail subqueries. Things like, "Best&nbsp;&nbsp; neighborhoods to stay in Tokyo, November weather&nbsp; in Kyoto, Japan Rail Pass worth it?" All running&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:53] simultaneously behind the scenes. It then pulls&nbsp; information from multiple sources across the web&nbsp;&nbsp; and combines it into one complete answer. In&nbsp; fact, research from Seir Interactive in Nective&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:05] found that the average prompt triggers 9 to 11&nbsp; fan out queries with some going as high as 28.&nbsp;&nbsp; And ChatGpt's deep research mode ran 420 searches&nbsp; for a single query about buying a red phone case.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:21] So, if your content ranks for those niche specific&nbsp; queries, your brand has a much better chance&nbsp;&nbsp; of being included in the AI's final response.&nbsp; And this is a huge shift from traditional SEO&nbsp;&nbsp; where you could optimize one page for one target&nbsp; keyword and call it a day. In AI search, you need&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:39] to be relevant across an entire topic. And I could&nbsp; even argue across an entire niche. Because if your&nbsp;&nbsp; page about how to start a podcast only covers the&nbsp; basics, but doesn't mention equipment, hosting, or&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:53] promotion, the AI is going to find someone else's&nbsp; page that does. Now you might be wondering, can I&nbsp;&nbsp; see these fanout queries? You sure can. In the AI&nbsp; responses report in HFS brand radar, you can see&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:06] the fan out queries for chat GPT and perplexity&nbsp; prompts. But there's an important caveat. Despina&nbsp;&nbsp; from HFS wrote in her guide on query fan out that&nbsp; these aren't like traditional longtail queries.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:18] They're synthetic, generated by AI in the moment.&nbsp; They're inconsistent. The same prompt can trigger&nbsp;&nbsp; different fanouts every time. And over 95% of&nbsp; them have zero search volume because real humans&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:32] would never type them. So don't think of fano&nbsp; queries as a new keyword list to optimize for.&nbsp;&nbsp; Think of them as a window into what topics the&nbsp; AI considers important for a given question.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:44] We'll get into exactly how to use this&nbsp; strategically in module 2 because for now&nbsp;&nbsp; we need to talk about how AI decides who to&nbsp; actually site. In traditional search rankings&nbsp;&nbsp; are relatively stable. Like if you're number three&nbsp; for a keyword today, you're probably going to be&nbsp;&nbsp;
[11:59] somewhere around there tomorrow. But AI citations&nbsp; are probabilistic. Patrick Stocks explained this&nbsp;&nbsp; really well. He said, "AI outputs are built on&nbsp; probabilities on top of probabilities on top of&nbsp;&nbsp; probabilities. The training data creates patterns.&nbsp; The retrieve pages add their own signals and then&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:16] there's a temperature setting that introduces&nbsp; randomness so the AI doesn't generate the exact&nbsp;&nbsp; same answer every time." Now, what that means in&nbsp; practice is that if you ask the same question five&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:28] times, you might get cited three out of five. Or&nbsp; the AI might mention your competitor twice and&nbsp;&nbsp; you twice and someone else once. There's no fixed&nbsp; position to rank for. This is why we talk about AI&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:40] visibility rather than AI rankings. It's more like&nbsp; a probability distribution than a leaderboard.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, that said, there are patterns in what gets&nbsp; cited more often. Based on the data we've studied&nbsp;&nbsp; at HRES, consensus matters. If multiple sources on&nbsp; the web say the same thing about your brand, AI is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[12:58] more likely to repeat it. And the more places your&nbsp; brand is mentioned in a consistent way, the higher&nbsp;&nbsp; the probability the AI picks it up. Freshness&nbsp; matters. AI cited content tends to be about 25%&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:10] fresher than what you'd see in a traditional SER.&nbsp; The AI is actively looking for recent information,&nbsp;&nbsp; especially for topics that change. Authority&nbsp; still matters. Pages that rank well in traditional&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:22] search have a major head start. Our data shows&nbsp; that 76% of AI overview citations come from pages&nbsp;&nbsp; already in the top 10 of Google. So, I'll hit that&nbsp; gong one more time. SEO is the foundation of AEO,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:37] but it's not only about Google rankings. 14% of&nbsp; pages cited in AI overviews don't rank in Google's&nbsp;&nbsp; top 100 at all. And for platforms like Chad GBT,&nbsp; the overlap with Google's results is even lower.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[13:51] So there's real opportunity for brands that aren't&nbsp; dominant in traditional search to still show up&nbsp;&nbsp; in AI. So let's tie all of this together.&nbsp; AI search engines pull from training data&nbsp;&nbsp; and real time web search. They expand your one&nbsp; query into dozens of subqueries through fan out.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:08] They merge and score results from all of&nbsp; those searches. and then they generate a&nbsp;&nbsp; response that's probabilistic, not fixed, based&nbsp; on patterns, consensus, freshness, and authority.&nbsp;&nbsp; Understanding this process is what makes every&nbsp; other lesson in this course make sense. So when I&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:25] tell you to earn more brand mentions, it's because&nbsp; of how consensus drives probability. When I talk&nbsp;&nbsp; about topic coverage, it's because of query fan&nbsp; out. When I say that SEO is the foundation again,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:37] it's because 76% of citations come from pages&nbsp; already ranking well. Now that you understand the&nbsp;&nbsp; mechanics, the obvious next question is, do all&nbsp; AI platforms work the same way? And the answer is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[14:52] not even close. Not even close. In the next&nbsp; lesson, we're going to compare AI overviews,&nbsp;&nbsp; chatbt, Perplexity, and Google's AI mode side&nbsp; by side. And the data on how different they&nbsp;&nbsp; are is pretty surprising. I'll see you in the&nbsp; next lesson. Hey, it's Samo and welcome to the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:08] second lesson which is on the differences between&nbsp; AI search platforms. Now, in the last lesson,&nbsp;&nbsp; I covered how AI search engines find and site&nbsp; content. But here's what I didn't tell you.&nbsp;&nbsp; They don't all do it the same way. And this&nbsp; matters a lot more than most people realize.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:25] Because if you're treating AI search as one&nbsp; thing and optimizing for it the same way across&nbsp;&nbsp; the board, you're likely leaving visibility on&nbsp; the table. So in this lesson, I'm going to break&nbsp;&nbsp; down the major AI search platforms like Google's&nbsp; [clears throat] AI overviews, Google's AI mode,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:40] ChatGpt, and Perplexity, and show you the data&nbsp; on just how different optimization for these&nbsp;&nbsp; platforms are. Let me start with a stat that&nbsp; might surprise you. We looked at the top 50&nbsp;&nbsp; most cited domains across Google AI overviews,&nbsp; ChatgBT, and Perplexity. And out of those 50,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[15:57] only seven appeared on all three platforms. That's&nbsp; only a 14% overlap. Think about that for a second.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you're only optimizing for one platform,&nbsp; you're potentially invisible on the others.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:09] And it gets even more interesting when you look&nbsp; at what each platform actually prefers. Google AI&nbsp;&nbsp; overviews favor authoritative established sites.&nbsp; Think health, finance, encyclopedic content,&nbsp;&nbsp; and Google owned properties like YouTube. In fact,&nbsp; YouTube accounts for about 5.6% of all AI overview&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:28] citations. And just look at how fast they're&nbsp; adding YouTube videos to their AI overviews.&nbsp;&nbsp; And obviously, Reddit's big here, too. ChatGpt&nbsp; leans heavily toward publishers and media.&nbsp;&nbsp; For example, authoritative sites like Reddit,&nbsp; Wikipedia, Amazon, Forbes, Business Insider,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:44] and Wired are some of the most cited domains&nbsp; here. In fact, the median domain rating of&nbsp;&nbsp; Chat GBPT's top-sighted pages is 90. So, it's&nbsp; pulling from high authority publishers, and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[16:56] that's partly because of licensing deals OpenAI&nbsp; has with some of these outlets. Perplexity is&nbsp;&nbsp; actually the most aligned with traditional Google&nbsp; search. About 28.6% 6% of perplexity citations&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:08] come from pages that rank in Google's top 10.&nbsp; Compare that to Chat GBT, which only overlaps&nbsp;&nbsp; with Google's top 10 about 8 to 10% of the time.&nbsp; So, if you're already ranking well in Google,&nbsp;&nbsp; Perplexity is probably where you'll see the most&nbsp; immediate AI visibility. And then there's Google's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:24] AI mode. Now, you might assume that since AI&nbsp; mode and AI overviews are both Google products,&nbsp;&nbsp; they'd site similar sources. Well, they don't.&nbsp; The citation overlap between AI overviews and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:36] AI mode is only 13.7%. Despite the fact that&nbsp; their answers are 86% semantically similar,&nbsp;&nbsp; meaning they're saying similar things but&nbsp; pulling from completely different sources.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[17:49] AI mode's top-sighted domain is YouTube by a&nbsp; wide margin, followed by Google and Wikipedia.&nbsp;&nbsp; We also found that it cites Quora 3.5 times more&nbsp; than AI overviews and pulls from social platforms&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:02] like Facebook and Instagram much more heavily. So&nbsp; the takeaway here is clear. AI search is not one&nbsp;&nbsp; thing. Each platform has its own index, its own&nbsp; biases, and its own preferences for what kind of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:15] sources it likes to site. So which platform should&nbsp; you focus on? This is the practical question and I&nbsp;&nbsp; think it's important to be strategic here rather&nbsp; than trying to optimize for everything at once.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:27] There are really two things to consider.&nbsp; The first is market share. As of right now,&nbsp;&nbsp; Google's AI features and chat GBT account&nbsp; for the vast majority of AI search traffic.&nbsp;&nbsp; Proplexity is growing, but it's still a fraction&nbsp; of the volume. So, if you have to prioritize,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:42] Google and chat GBT are where most of the eyeballs&nbsp; are, at least for now. The second thing to&nbsp;&nbsp; consider is how much overlap there is between what&nbsp; you're already doing in SEO and what each platform&nbsp;&nbsp; rewards. If you're already ranking well in Google,&nbsp; you have a natural head start with AI overviews&nbsp;&nbsp;
[18:58] and Plexity. So, why not lean into it? 76% of AI&nbsp; overview citations used to come from pages already&nbsp;&nbsp; in Google's top 10. And I say used to because that&nbsp; number has dropped. A more recent study shows it's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:12] now closer to 38%. Which is still a lot. AI&nbsp; overviews are increasingly pulling from pages&nbsp;&nbsp; outside the top 10, including YouTube and Reddit.&nbsp; So, the connection between Google rankings and AI&nbsp;&nbsp; citations is weakening. Chat GBT is much more&nbsp; interested in publisher authority and editorial&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:30] content. So, if your brand gets mentioned&nbsp; on Forbes, in a Reddit thread, or on a niche&nbsp;&nbsp; review site, that might matter more for ChatGpt&nbsp; visibility than your own pages Google ranking.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:42] And here's something a lot of people miss. Many of&nbsp; the top sighted domains in AI search don't get any&nbsp;&nbsp; traditional search traffic at all. AI visibility&nbsp; is its own game. Now, if you want to see the top&nbsp;&nbsp;
[19:54] domains for a specific platform, you can check&nbsp; that in HR brand radar. Just run a blank search&nbsp;&nbsp; and go to the cited domains report. Then you&nbsp; can filter using your desired AI platform.&nbsp;&nbsp; What you'll typically see is that the websites&nbsp; citing your brand are different on each platform.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:10] A domain that shows up heavily in AI overviews&nbsp; might barely appear in ChatGBT and vice versa.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is why a one-sizefits-all approach to AEO&nbsp; doesn't work. Now, the good news is you don't&nbsp;&nbsp; need to build completely separate strategies&nbsp; for each platform. A lot of the fundamentals,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:26] creating quality content, earning mentions,&nbsp; building topical authority help across the&nbsp;&nbsp; board. But knowing where each platform pulls from&nbsp; helps you prioritize your efforts. For example,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:38] if chat GBT is a big traffic driver for your&nbsp; niche, you'd want to focus on getting mentioned&nbsp;&nbsp; on high DR editorial sites and publishers. If AI&nbsp; overviews matter more, YouTube and Reddit should&nbsp;&nbsp; be on your radar. We'll get into these specific&nbsp; strategies in modules 2 and three. But for now,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[20:54] the key thing to understand is that each platform&nbsp; is its own ecosystem with its own rules. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp; before we actually start optimizing for AI search,&nbsp; there's something else you need to understand.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:07] What does winning an AI search even look like?&nbsp; Because it's not just about getting a link or&nbsp;&nbsp; a mention. So, in the next lesson, I'm going to&nbsp; break down the different types of AI visibility&nbsp;&nbsp; and why some of them might be more valuable to&nbsp; you than others. See you in the next lesson.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:23] Hey, it's Samo and welcome to the third lesson&nbsp; in module one. Now, in the last two lessons,&nbsp;&nbsp; I covered how AI search engines find and site&nbsp; content and how each platform works differently.&nbsp;&nbsp; But there's a question we haven't answered yet.&nbsp; What does winning in AI search actually look like?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:39] Because most people hear AI visibility,&nbsp; and they think it means one thing,&nbsp;&nbsp; getting a link in an AI response. But that's&nbsp; just one piece of the puzzle. And honestly,&nbsp;&nbsp; it might not even be the most valuable&nbsp; piece for your business. So, in this lesson,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[21:54] I'm going to break down the different types&nbsp; of AI visibility, show you the data on how&nbsp;&nbsp; often each one actually happens, and help you&nbsp; figure out which type matters most for you.&nbsp;&nbsp; Let me walk you through the three types of AI&nbsp; visibility, and I want you to think about which&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:08] one applies to your business as I go through each.&nbsp; The first is cited and linked. This is the one&nbsp;&nbsp; everyone thinks about. AI includes a link to your&nbsp; page and its sources. The user can click through&nbsp;&nbsp; and land on your site. This is the best case for&nbsp; direct traffic and it's the easiest to measure.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:24] The second is mentioned but not linked.&nbsp; AI says your brand in its response but it&nbsp;&nbsp; doesn't give the user a link to click. You don't&nbsp; necessarily get the direct traffic or any traffic&nbsp;&nbsp; but the user now knows your name. And if&nbsp; they're interested, what are they going to do?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:40] They're going to search for you. This is&nbsp; basically a word of mouth recommendation at scale.&nbsp;&nbsp; And the third is not visible at all. AI doesn't&nbsp; mention you. It doesn't link to you. you're just&nbsp;&nbsp; not in the conversation. And this is actually&nbsp; important to know because you can't fix what you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[22:55] don't know is broken. Now, here's the thing. Most&nbsp; people assume that when AI mentions your brand,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's probably including a link. Well, not exactly.&nbsp; On average, only about 28% of AI mentions include&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:07] a link. That means roughly seven out of 10 times&nbsp; your brand comes up in an AI response, there's no&nbsp;&nbsp; link attached. And it varies a lot by platform.&nbsp; Perplexity is the most generous, about 51.6 6% of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:20] mentions get a link. AI mode is around 36.8%.&nbsp; Chat GBT is at 26.9% and AI overviews only 10.7%.&nbsp;&nbsp; So if you're mostly tracking AI overviews, almost&nbsp; nine out of 10 times your brand shows up, there's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:36] no link. Now, you might think that means most AI&nbsp; visibility is low value since there's no click.&nbsp;&nbsp; But here's something that might surprise you.&nbsp; When we weighted these mentions by search volume,&nbsp;&nbsp; basically how many people are likely asking&nbsp; similar questions, the ones that do include a link&nbsp;&nbsp;
[23:54] tend to appear on much higher traffic queries. For&nbsp; example, on Perplexity, links show up in about 78%&nbsp;&nbsp; of total impressions, even though they're only in&nbsp; 51% of individual mentions. On Gemini, it's even&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:08] more dramatic. Links appear in 71% of impressions&nbsp; despite being in only 16.8% 8% of mentions.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, the takeaway here is this. Citations&nbsp; are relatively rare, but when they happen,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:21] they tend to happen on the ones with the most&nbsp; eyeballs. But that doesn't mean unlin mentions&nbsp;&nbsp; are worthless. Far from it. Think about how LLMs&nbsp; actually work. They learn by reading the web.&nbsp;&nbsp; And every time your brand name appears on a&nbsp; credible site connected to a specific topic,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:37] that becomes another training example. The more&nbsp; the model sees your brand associated with a topic,&nbsp;&nbsp; the more confidently it mentions you when someone&nbsp; asks about that topic. It's like when you hear&nbsp;&nbsp; peanut butter, you think jelly. Or when you hear&nbsp; Tesla, you think electric cars. LMS build these&nbsp;&nbsp;
[24:53] same associations. And unlin mentions are what&nbsp; feed them. And there's real data to back this up.&nbsp;&nbsp; In a study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions&nbsp; had the strongest correlation with AI visibility,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[25:06] a 0.664 664 correlation with showing up in&nbsp; AI overviews that's stronger than backlinks,&nbsp;&nbsp; domain rating, referring domains,&nbsp; or any other traditional SEO metric.&nbsp;&nbsp; So even when AI doesn't give you a link, just&nbsp; being mentioned is building your brand's presence&nbsp;&nbsp;
[25:22] in the model. It's the long game and it compounds&nbsp; over time. Now, there's another layer to this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Not all AI responses look the same and the&nbsp; type of response matters for your business.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[25:34] For example, some queries trigger step-by-step&nbsp; guides like how to fix a leaky faucet,&nbsp;&nbsp; how to set up Google Analytics, and if you're&nbsp; a service-based business or you create how-to&nbsp;&nbsp; content, these can be opportunities if you can&nbsp; get AI to recommend you as an expert. Then you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[25:48] have direct answers like what's the capital of&nbsp; France? If you're a publisher orformational brand,&nbsp;&nbsp; being the source AI sites for factual answers&nbsp; can build massive authority, but you probably&nbsp;&nbsp;
[26:00] won't get a click from these since AI gives the&nbsp; answer directly. And then there's video citations.&nbsp;&nbsp; We covered this in the last lesson. YouTube is&nbsp; one of the most cited domains across AI platforms.&nbsp;&nbsp; And if you're a creator, your videos can show up&nbsp; directly in AI responses. And some people prefer&nbsp;&nbsp;
[26:16] watching videos over reading text. So here's&nbsp; what I want you to take away from this lesson.&nbsp;&nbsp; AI visibility isn't binary. You're not&nbsp; just visible or invisible. It's a spectrum.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[26:28] And the type of visibility that matters most&nbsp; depends entirely on your business. If you sell&nbsp;&nbsp; a product, you want your brand showing up when&nbsp; people ask about your category. For example,&nbsp;&nbsp; a query like best golf balls surfaces tons&nbsp; of different brands and models and someone&nbsp;&nbsp;
[26:44] can literally click through from the AI response,&nbsp; land on a shopping result or the manufacturer site&nbsp;&nbsp; and buy something right away. That's a citation&nbsp; doing real work. If you're a publisher or&nbsp;&nbsp; content creator, training data visibility&nbsp; is your long gate. Every article AI cites,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[27:00] every video it surfaces reinforces your authority&nbsp; in the model. And if you're not yet visible, well,&nbsp;&nbsp; that's why you're taking this course. Now, if you&nbsp; want to see where you stand in AI search, go to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[27:12] HS brand radar and search for your website. And&nbsp; right away, you'll see how you stack up against&nbsp;&nbsp; competitors across different AI platforms. And you&nbsp; can filter by mentions, which are when your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; is named but not linked. citations, which is when&nbsp; AI actually links to your site, impressions, and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[27:29] share a voice. The gap between your impressions&nbsp; and your mentions is your opportunity. If AI is&nbsp;&nbsp; responding to queries about your topic, but not&nbsp; naming you, that's exactly where you need to&nbsp;&nbsp; focus. And that's exactly what we'll be covering&nbsp; in module 2, where we'll cover AEO, strategy,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[27:46] research, targeting, and gaps. I'll see you&nbsp; there. Hey, it's Ammo and welcome to the second&nbsp;&nbsp; module in our AI search course. Now, in module&nbsp; one, we covered how AI search actually works,&nbsp;&nbsp; the mechanics, the platforms, and what winning AI&nbsp; visibility looks like. In this module, I'm going&nbsp;&nbsp;
[28:03] to walk you through an AEO strategy that works&nbsp; in two phases. First, we'll assess where your&nbsp;&nbsp; brand stands today, figuring out exactly where&nbsp; the gaps are. Then, we'll move on to discovery,&nbsp;&nbsp; where we'll find the keywords and prompts people&nbsp; use to get information related to your business.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[28:18] So, let's start with step one, assess. In&nbsp; this lesson, I'm going to walk you through&nbsp;&nbsp; how to run a brand gap analysis. A brand gap&nbsp; analysis measures the difference between where&nbsp;&nbsp; your brand should be showing up and where it&nbsp; actually is. So, this is in Google search,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[28:32] AI results, and basically across the web. It&nbsp; examines everything shaping your discoverability&nbsp;&nbsp; and reputation from how AI describes you to&nbsp; which competitors are cited instead of you. So,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[28:44] the first step in this analysis is to map out your&nbsp; branded entities. Before you can find your gaps,&nbsp;&nbsp; you need to get clear on what you're actually&nbsp; measuring. And here's the thing, your brand gets&nbsp;&nbsp; referred to differently by different people.&nbsp; So, you want to map out your main brand name,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[28:59] any subbrands, product names, proprietary&nbsp; features, proprietary metrics, and even personal&nbsp;&nbsp; brands associated with your company. For example,&nbsp; at Hrefs, we'd map out the main brand, Hrefs,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[29:11] product brands like Site Explorer, Brand Radar,&nbsp; and AI content helper, proprietary metrics like&nbsp;&nbsp; domain rating and traffic potential, and personal&nbsp; brands like Tim Solo, Patrick Stocks, Ryan Law,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[29:23] and Glenn Alaw. Each of these has its own&nbsp; visibility profile in search and AI results.&nbsp;&nbsp; And you can repeat the analysis I'm about to show&nbsp; you for each one. Once you have your list, connect&nbsp;&nbsp; each entity to the topics and attributes people&nbsp; should associate with it. Search engines and LLMs&nbsp;&nbsp;
[29:39] don't understand brand names on their own. They&nbsp; infer meaning from how your brand is described and&nbsp;&nbsp; discussed. So, you need to clarify what problems&nbsp; you solve, what qualities you're known for,&nbsp;&nbsp; and what context you belong in. A quick way to&nbsp; do this is keyword research. Look for recurring&nbsp;&nbsp;
[29:55] adjectives, modifiers, and descriptive&nbsp; phrases people use alongside your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; or category. things like affordable, AI powered,&nbsp; enterprisegrain, whatever applies to your space.&nbsp;&nbsp; This gives you your benchmark for what your brand&nbsp; should be known and found for. Now, let's move on&nbsp;&nbsp;
[30:11] to the second step, which is to run your audit in&nbsp; hres. Start by entering your brand's website into&nbsp;&nbsp; site explorer. You'll get a dashboard of baseline&nbsp; metrics, domain rating, referring domains,&nbsp;&nbsp; organic keywords, organic traffic, and traffic&nbsp; value. This gives you your traditional SEO&nbsp;&nbsp;
[30:26] snapshot. But what we really care about in the&nbsp; context of AEO are the AI citation metrics which&nbsp;&nbsp; give you a snapshot of your brand's visibility&nbsp; in AI search across different platforms.&nbsp;&nbsp; Clicking into any of those takes you to the brand&nbsp; radar report for that platform which is where the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[30:42] real audit happens and there are four key things&nbsp; to pay attention to. First are mentions which are&nbsp;&nbsp; the number of times your brand is mentioned&nbsp; in AI responses. Then we have citations which&nbsp;&nbsp; are the number of times your website is actually&nbsp; cited as a source. impressions, an estimation of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[30:58] exposure based on how often responses containing&nbsp; your brand are shown, and AI share a voice,&nbsp;&nbsp; how often your brand is mentioned compared to your&nbsp; competitors. Now, the real power of Brand Radar is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[31:10] in its filters. This is where you can isolate the&nbsp; exact scenarios that matter. For example, you can&nbsp;&nbsp; filter for prompts that mention your brand name&nbsp; in the AI platform of choice. You can filter for&nbsp;&nbsp; responses that mention your brand but don't site&nbsp; your website. Those are miscitation opportunities.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[31:27] You can also add a competitor and then filter for&nbsp; queries where they're mentioned but you're not.&nbsp;&nbsp; And you can look at specific topics to see&nbsp; whether AI associates them with your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; or someone else's. Now take note of these numbers&nbsp; and let's move on to the third step which is to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[31:42] identify your gaps. When you're looking at this&nbsp; data, it helps to think about your gaps across six&nbsp;&nbsp; dimensions. And this is a framework Despina from&nbsp; Atro's laid out in her brand gap analysis guide.&nbsp;&nbsp; The first is your visibility gap. This is where&nbsp; your brand appears less often than competitors in&nbsp;&nbsp;
[31:57] search or AI results. The second is your narrative&nbsp; gap. This is how AI or media describes your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; versus how you actually want to be positioned.&nbsp; For example, maybe you're a premium tool, but AI&nbsp;&nbsp;
[32:09] keeps calling you a budget alternative or your key&nbsp; differentiator just isn't coming through. Third&nbsp;&nbsp; is your topic gap. These are topics you should&nbsp; be associated with but aren't. Like if you're a&nbsp;&nbsp; project management tool, but AI never mentions you&nbsp; when people ask about remote team collaboration.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[32:26] That would be a topic gap. Fourth is your format&nbsp; gap. AI tends to site certain types of content,&nbsp;&nbsp; guides, videos, reviews, comparison pages, and&nbsp; if you're not producing them, that's a gap. For&nbsp;&nbsp;
[32:38] example, in module one, we talked about YouTube&nbsp; being one of the most cited domains. And if your&nbsp;&nbsp; competitors have YouTube content getting cited and&nbsp; you don't, then you've got a content format gap.&nbsp;&nbsp; Fifth is your web mentions gap. These are&nbsp; external sources, listicles, review sites,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[32:53] forums, publications that mention competitors&nbsp; but not you. And as we covered in module one,&nbsp;&nbsp; those third party mentions are one of the&nbsp; strongest signals for AI visibility. And sixth&nbsp;&nbsp;
[33:06] is your demand gap. These are branded queries or&nbsp; searches that signal awareness opportunities you&nbsp;&nbsp; haven't captured. People are searching for things&nbsp; in your space, but your brand name never comes up&nbsp;&nbsp; alongside those searches. Now, when you look at&nbsp; all six together, you get a complete picture of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[33:23] your brand's visibility in AI. Not just how often&nbsp; you show up, but whether you're showing up for the&nbsp;&nbsp; right things in the right way in the right places.&nbsp; So, as you do your brand audit in step two, it's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[33:36] worth adding your prompts to these buckets. And&nbsp; it'll set you up perfectly for the fourth step,&nbsp;&nbsp; which is to prioritize. You're going to find a lot&nbsp; of gaps, and you can't fix everything at once. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; you're going to have to prioritize your efforts.&nbsp; You're generally going to do one of three things.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[33:53] Fix, which is improving or optimizing something&nbsp; that already exists. you're going to build, which&nbsp;&nbsp; is creating new content or pages for opportunities&nbsp; you're not covering at all, or influence, which&nbsp;&nbsp;
[34:05] is strengthening your off-site visibility through&nbsp; outreach and brand mentions. And you want to weigh&nbsp;&nbsp; each opportunity by asking, "How much demand&nbsp; could this drive? Does it support your brand&nbsp;&nbsp; credibility? And does it improve your chances of&nbsp; being cited in AI?" Start with the quick ones.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[34:22] If you have a page that's already ranking but&nbsp; just needs a content update to close a topic gap,&nbsp;&nbsp; that's low effort and potentially high impact. If&nbsp; you're missing from a major listical that all your&nbsp;&nbsp; competitors are on, that's a web meions gap you&nbsp; can close with outreach. Now, as you go through&nbsp;&nbsp;
[34:38] this process, you'll probably find that most of&nbsp; your gaps fall into one or two of the buckets I&nbsp;&nbsp; mentioned before. And that's a good thing because&nbsp; it tells you exactly where to focus so you can&nbsp;&nbsp; create systems around them. and I'll walk you&nbsp; through how to close each type of gap in module 3.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[34:54] From creating content that gets cited to earning&nbsp; mentions from thirdparty sites to optimizing your&nbsp;&nbsp; YouTube presence. So the audit you do right now,&nbsp; it becomes your personalized road map for the rest&nbsp;&nbsp; of this course. Now, one more thing, you can do&nbsp; this exact same audit for your competitors to get&nbsp;&nbsp;
[35:10] a wealth of insights on new topics and gaps&nbsp; that will be relevant to your business. Look&nbsp;&nbsp; at their branded queries to see what users and AI&nbsp; connect to them more strongly than they do to you.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[35:22] Sometimes those are quick wins. You might already&nbsp; have the features, you just haven't created the&nbsp;&nbsp; content that connects them to your brand, or you&nbsp; don't have enough pages that are talking about&nbsp;&nbsp; that feature. We've put together a template&nbsp; you can use to organize all of this and share&nbsp;&nbsp;
[35:36] it with stakeholders. So, I'll link that in the&nbsp; description. Now, you have your baseline saved and&nbsp;&nbsp; a clear picture of where the gaps are. But knowing&nbsp; your gaps is only the first step. You also need to&nbsp;&nbsp; know what opportunities are out there. And keyword&nbsp; and prompt research for AEO is how you do it,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[35:52] but it's a bit different from what you might be&nbsp; used to. There are queries where AI dominates,&nbsp;&nbsp; queries where traditional SEO still wins,&nbsp; and a whole set of platforms most people&nbsp;&nbsp; aren't even thinking about. That's what we'll&nbsp; cover in the next lesson. I'll see you there.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[36:07] Hey, it's Ammo and welcome to the second lesson,&nbsp; which is on keyword and prompt research for AEO.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, in the last lesson, I walked you through how&nbsp; to run a brand gap analysis, so you should have a&nbsp;&nbsp; clear picture of where your brand is showing up&nbsp; and where it isn't. Now, it's time to find the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[36:22] keywords and prompts to actually go after. And&nbsp; in this lesson, I'm going to walk you through&nbsp;&nbsp; the full keyword research process for both SEO and&nbsp; AEO. Why? Because there's a ton of overlap between&nbsp;&nbsp; the two. And half the battle is really identifying&nbsp; which is which and knowing how to approach them&nbsp;&nbsp;
[36:39] differently. So, the first step is to build&nbsp; your keyword list. And this part honestly hasn't&nbsp;&nbsp; changed that much. You still need two things. Seed&nbsp; keywords, which are broad terms related to your&nbsp;&nbsp; niche, and modifiers, which are add-ons like best&nbsp; or howto that turn those seeds into real searches.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[36:56] Now, a quick way to come up with these is to just&nbsp; ask your AI assistant of choice something like,&nbsp;&nbsp; I'm doing keyword research for my type of site,&nbsp; which makes money through my revenue model.&nbsp;&nbsp; My target audience is this group. Give me 10&nbsp; seed keywords that are one to two words max&nbsp;&nbsp;
[37:13] and five plus modifiers that will help&nbsp; me surface appropriate content formats&nbsp;&nbsp; I can use in my keyword research. The seeds&nbsp; and modifiers should not share the same words.&nbsp;&nbsp; And just like that, you've got a solid&nbsp; list of seeds and modifiers to work with,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[37:28] but these are just the starting point. Take your&nbsp; seeds and paste them into keywords explorer.&nbsp;&nbsp; Then go to the matching terms report and add&nbsp; your modifiers using the include filter. And just&nbsp;&nbsp; like that, you should have hundreds, maybe even&nbsp; thousands of real keyword ideas your audience is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[37:43] actually typing into Google. Now, the second step&nbsp; is to vet those keywords because some of them are&nbsp;&nbsp; a trap. Some of these keywords are going to look&nbsp; incredibly enticing. High volume, high traffic&nbsp;&nbsp; potential, low difficulty scores, all the right&nbsp; metrics, but not all of them are worth targeting.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[38:00] Before you commit to any keyword, it needs to&nbsp; pass three tests. I call this the bid formula.&nbsp;&nbsp; B is for business potential. Ask yourself, if&nbsp; I rank number one for this keyword, does it&nbsp;&nbsp; actually help my business? A keyword like what&nbsp; is espresso has solid volume and low difficulty,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[38:17] but someone searching that isn't looking to&nbsp; buy anything, maybe ever. Compare that to best&nbsp;&nbsp; espresso machine under $500, where the searcher&nbsp; is showing intent and has a budget. Always choose&nbsp;&nbsp;
[38:29] keywords that move the needle. I is for intent.&nbsp; Google the keyword and look at what's actually&nbsp;&nbsp; ranking. If every top result is an e-commerce&nbsp; page and you're trying to rank a blog post,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's not going to happen. The SER tells you what&nbsp; searchers want. Match the intent or move on. And&nbsp;&nbsp;
[38:47] D is for difficulty. You need to choose keywords&nbsp; you actually have a chance at ranking for. Check&nbsp;&nbsp; the referring domains and domain rating of the top&nbsp; ranking pages. In general, the more links and the&nbsp;&nbsp; higher the DR, the tougher the competition. If&nbsp; you see a few low DR sites in the top 10, that's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[39:03] usually a good sign. If a keyword passes all three&nbsp; tests, you should consider targeting it. Unless,&nbsp;&nbsp; and this is where step three comes in, the&nbsp; AI filter. Before you commit to any keyword,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[39:15] there's one more question you need to ask.&nbsp; Can AI fully satisfy the user for this query?&nbsp;&nbsp; Because even if a keyword passes bid, if the&nbsp; AI overview is so good, there's no reason for&nbsp;&nbsp;
[39:28] anyone to click through, that keyword might&nbsp; be a trap. And there's hard data behind this.&nbsp;&nbsp; AI overviews appear on about 21% of all keywords,&nbsp; but for informational queries, it's much higher.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[39:42] Nearly 58% for question queries, 46% for queries&nbsp; with seven or more words, and 99.9% of keywords&nbsp;&nbsp; that trigger AI overviews areformational in&nbsp; intent. So before you commit to a keyword,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[39:55] Google it. Look at what shows up. Put yourself in&nbsp; the searcher shoe and ask, "Am I satisfied with&nbsp;&nbsp; this answer or do I need to click somewhere&nbsp; to learn more?" If the AI overview nails it,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[40:07] that keyword might not be worth targeting the&nbsp; traditional way. But here's the good news. Even&nbsp;&nbsp; though AI is eating clicks for a ton offormational&nbsp; keywords, there's a whole category of searches&nbsp;&nbsp; AI hasn't touched. Free tools, search backlink&nbsp; checker, no AI overview, mortgage calculator,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[40:25] nothing. Word counter, nothing. Why? Because when&nbsp; someone searches for a tool, they need to actually&nbsp;&nbsp; use something. AI can't replace that yet. To find&nbsp; these opportunities, go back to keywords explorer&nbsp;&nbsp;
[40:38] with your broad seeds. Head to the matching terms&nbsp; report and add modifiers like calculator, checker,&nbsp;&nbsp; generator, tool, template, finder, planner, and&nbsp; maker. These are all actionoriented queries where&nbsp;&nbsp;
[40:51] someone needs to do something. AI can't satisfy&nbsp; that yet. So the organic click is still there for&nbsp;&nbsp; the taking. You can also filter for transactional&nbsp; intent directly. Just choose transactional in the&nbsp;&nbsp; intent filter and you'll get queries where people&nbsp; are looking to buy, sign up or take some kind of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[41:08] action. Now the fourth step is to find your&nbsp; AI mention opportunities. A minute ago I said&nbsp;&nbsp; if the AI overview nails the answer, that keyword&nbsp; might not be worth targeting the traditional way.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[41:21] But that doesn't mean you ignore it. These&nbsp; keywords just need to be targeted differently.&nbsp;&nbsp; And that's where AEO comes in. Instead of trying&nbsp; to rank and earn a click, your goal is to get your&nbsp;&nbsp; brand mentioned in the AI response itself. And to&nbsp; do that, you need to know which queries to focus&nbsp;&nbsp;
[41:36] on and which pages AI is pulling from. Now,&nbsp; it helps to know what AI is actually citing.&nbsp;&nbsp; We studied this across AI overviews and chat&nbsp; GPT and found that 43.8% of all cited pages&nbsp;&nbsp;
[41:49] are listicles. And in my opinion, these pages show&nbsp; up so often because they help AI build consensus.&nbsp;&nbsp; So if your brand is mentioned across multiple&nbsp; lists, that's multiple sources recommending you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[42:01] and AI picks up on that. So to find&nbsp; the queries that matter for your brand,&nbsp;&nbsp; go to brand radar and enter your website. Find&nbsp; your brand, hover over the AI platform you&nbsp;&nbsp; want to research and click others only. This&nbsp; shows you that mention gaps where competitors&nbsp;&nbsp;
[42:16] are showing up but you're not. Then filter for&nbsp; queries containing best, top, versus, review,&nbsp;&nbsp; or alternative. And you'll see the queries where&nbsp; AI is mentioning your competitors but not you,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[42:29] and the ones AI is most likely pulling from when&nbsp; looking for brands in your space. This is your&nbsp;&nbsp; short list. Now, one thing to keep in mind, over&nbsp; 45% of citations change when AI overviews refresh,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[42:42] and that happens on average every 2 days. So, this&nbsp; isn't a one-time exercise. It's worth revisiting&nbsp;&nbsp; this report regularly to catch new queries as they&nbsp; come in. And that brings us to the fifth step,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[42:54] prompt research. When someone opens&nbsp; Chat GBT, Google AI mode, or Perplexity,&nbsp;&nbsp; they're not typing keywords. They're having&nbsp; conversations. They're saying things like,&nbsp;&nbsp; "I'm a small agency owner looking for a marketing&nbsp; platform. Which one should I choose?" Or,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[43:08] "What's the best way to track rankings if I'm&nbsp; just getting started?" They use natural language&nbsp;&nbsp; with full context and so every person phrases&nbsp; it differently. So you can't approach this the&nbsp;&nbsp; way you would keyword research where you find the&nbsp; exact terms and go after them one by one. With AI,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[43:25] the same question asked 10 different ways can&nbsp; get 10 different answers with 10 different brands&nbsp;&nbsp; mentioned. And on top of that, AI fans each prompt&nbsp; out into many sub queries behind the scenes,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[43:37] most of which have zero search volume and will&nbsp; never repeat. If you're invisible for a topic,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's not about optimizing for one specific prompt.&nbsp; It's about building visibility across that entire&nbsp;&nbsp;
[43:50] topic, which is exactly what we'll cover in&nbsp; module three. So, with your topic list and&nbsp;&nbsp; your prompt gaps mapped out, let's go and close&nbsp; those gaps. I'll see you in the next lesson.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hey, it's Ammo and welcome to the third module&nbsp; in our AI search course. In modules one and two,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[44:06] we covered how AI search works and how to&nbsp; find the keywords and prompts to go after.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, it's time to actually execute. And that's&nbsp; what this module is all about. And in this first&nbsp;&nbsp; lesson, we're going to be talking about creating&nbsp; content that gets cited. And I've got some data&nbsp;&nbsp;
[44:21] on what AI actually sites to back our strategy.&nbsp; First, content length doesn't matter. We analyze&nbsp;&nbsp; over 174,000 pages cited in AI overviews and the&nbsp; correlation between word count and getting cited&nbsp;&nbsp;
[44:34] is just 0.04. That's basically zero. Over half&nbsp; of all cited pages, 53.4% are under a,000 words.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, if you've been writing 3,000word articles&nbsp; because you think longer content ranks better,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[44:50] that doesn't apply here with AEO. AI&nbsp; doesn't care how long your page is.&nbsp;&nbsp; It cares whether your page answers the&nbsp; question. Second, freshness matters a lot.&nbsp;&nbsp; Content cited by AI is on average 25.7% fresher&nbsp; than what ranks in traditional organic results.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[45:07] And when you look at chat GBT specifically, 89.7%&nbsp; of its top cited pages were updated in 2025.&nbsp;&nbsp; And get this, 76% were refreshed within the&nbsp; last 30 days. Think about that for a second.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[45:21] If your content hasn't been touched in 6 months,&nbsp; you're already at a disadvantage for AI citations.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, this doesn't mean you should just change the&nbsp; publish date and call it a day. Google can detect&nbsp;&nbsp;
[45:33] that. You need to make meaningful updates to the&nbsp; actual content. We'll talk about how to do that&nbsp;&nbsp; later in this lesson. And the third data point is&nbsp; that format matters. If you remember from the last&nbsp;&nbsp; module, we talked about how 43.8% of all cited&nbsp; pages by chatbt are listicles. Best X, top X,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[45:52] comparisons, reviews. That's not a coincidence.&nbsp; These formats are built for AI because they give&nbsp;&nbsp; clear, structured recommendations that AI can pull&nbsp; from. But lists aren't the only format that work.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[46:04] Datadriven content with original stats also get&nbsp; cited heavily because AI loves citing specific&nbsp;&nbsp; numbers. And comparison content like X versus&nbsp; Y pages perform well because they map directly&nbsp;&nbsp;
[46:17] to how people ask AI questions. So, the key&nbsp; takeaway here is simple. Keep your content fresh,&nbsp;&nbsp; keep it focused, and lean into formats that AI&nbsp; can actually use. Now, let's talk about how to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[46:30] actually structure your content so AI can use it.&nbsp; And here's something a lot of people get wrong.&nbsp;&nbsp; They think they need to write differently for&nbsp; AI. Like, there's some special AI optimized&nbsp;&nbsp; format they need to follow. There isn't. You're&nbsp; writing for humans. AI is trained on what humans&nbsp;&nbsp;
[46:47] find valuable. So content that serves human&nbsp; readers well is content AI wants to site.&nbsp;&nbsp; That said, there are a few principles that help&nbsp; both humans and AI get more out of your content.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[47:00] The first one is bluff, which stands for bottom&nbsp; line upfront. This one's borrowed from military&nbsp;&nbsp; communication, and it's simple. Start every&nbsp; section with the answer, not the backstory.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[47:12] For example, instead of opening a section with,&nbsp; "Over the past few years, link building strategies&nbsp;&nbsp; have evolved significantly due to changes in&nbsp; how search engines evaluate link quality,"&nbsp;&nbsp; you could write, "The most effective way to build&nbsp; backlinks in 2026 is to create original research."&nbsp;&nbsp;
[47:28] Now, here's why this matters. When humans scan&nbsp; a page, they follow what's called an F pattern.&nbsp;&nbsp; They read the beginning closely, skim the middle,&nbsp; and maybe pick up again at the end. LLM show a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[47:40] similar pattern. They weigh the beginning and&nbsp; end of a passage more heavily than the middle.&nbsp;&nbsp; So if your key point is buried three paragraphs&nbsp; into a section, both humans and AI might miss it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[47:52] So put the answer first, then support it with&nbsp; context and examples. The second principle to&nbsp;&nbsp; apply is atomic content. This means every section&nbsp; on your page should be able to stand on its own.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[48:04] So, when editing your content, ask yourself,&nbsp; if AI pulls just one section from your article,&nbsp;&nbsp; does it still make sense, or does it depend&nbsp; on context from three paragraphs earlier?&nbsp;&nbsp; This matters because AI systems chunk your&nbsp; content into pieces when they process it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[48:20] Different AI models chunk content differently,&nbsp; and you can't control how they do it. But if every&nbsp;&nbsp; section is self-contained, it doesn't matter where&nbsp; the chunks fall because the meaning survives. A&nbsp;&nbsp;
[48:32] good test you can do is to take any H2 section on&nbsp; your page and read it completely out of context.&nbsp;&nbsp; If it doesn't make sense without the rest of the&nbsp; page, rewrite it so it does. The third principle&nbsp;&nbsp; is entity rich writing. AI understands text by&nbsp; looking at entities and the relationships between&nbsp;&nbsp;
[48:49] them. Entities are things like brands, products,&nbsp; people, places, and specific concepts. So instead&nbsp;&nbsp; of writing this tool helps with SEO, write HF's&nbsp; keywords explorer helps you find keywords with&nbsp;&nbsp;
[49:01] low difficulty and high traffic potential.&nbsp; By providing more entities, relationships,&nbsp;&nbsp; and context, AI has more to work with. And&nbsp; this also ties into how AI picks what to site.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[49:13] The more specific and concrete your content&nbsp; is, the more useful it is when AI is trying&nbsp;&nbsp; to answer a specific question. And the fourth&nbsp; principle is to keep it simple and declarative.&nbsp;&nbsp; Use short sentences and clear subject verb object&nbsp; structure. Basically, try to keep things to one&nbsp;&nbsp;
[49:30] idea per sentence. This isn't about dumbing down&nbsp; your content. It's about making it easy to parse&nbsp;&nbsp; for both people and AI. If a sentence takes two&nbsp; reads to understand, it's probably too complex.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[49:43] Simplify it. Your readers will thank you and&nbsp; AI will have an easier time extracting the key&nbsp;&nbsp; points. Now, these four principles will help you&nbsp; create content that's more likely to get cited.&nbsp;&nbsp; But there are a couple more things worth&nbsp; knowing that can push your chances even further.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[49:58] And the first is something most people don't think&nbsp; about. LMS have a tendency to flatten originality.&nbsp;&nbsp; Like if you come up with an original concept&nbsp; or framework and you're the only one talking&nbsp;&nbsp; about it, AI will often absorb the idea without&nbsp; crediting you. It becomes part of its general&nbsp;&nbsp;
[50:15] knowledge. The way around this is to label your&nbsp; ideas with your brand name. For example, instead&nbsp;&nbsp; of calling something a content scoring matrix,&nbsp; call it the HF's content scoring matrix or your&nbsp;&nbsp; brand content scoring matrix. Define it explicitly&nbsp; and then distribute it widely across your blog,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[50:33] social media channels, podcasts, Reddit, etc. The&nbsp; more places it shows up with your name attached,&nbsp;&nbsp; the harder it is for AI to flatten it into&nbsp; generic knowledge. Now, another thing you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[50:45] can do is refresh what I call sleeper pages. These&nbsp; are pages on your site that used to rank well but&nbsp;&nbsp; have slowly declined over time. They already have&nbsp; the back links. They already have the authority.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[50:57] They just need a refresh. And because freshness&nbsp; is such a strong signal for AI citations,&nbsp;&nbsp; updating these pages can be one of the fastest&nbsp; ways to gain AI visibility. Here's how to find&nbsp;&nbsp; them. Go to site explorer and enter your domain&nbsp; and head to the top pages report. Then sort by&nbsp;&nbsp;
[51:13] traffic change and look for pages with significant&nbsp; declines. What you're looking for are pages that&nbsp;&nbsp; have two things. A decent number of backlinks,&nbsp; which means they already have authority,&nbsp;&nbsp; and a clear traffic decline, which usually means&nbsp; the content has gone stale. Now, before you update&nbsp;&nbsp;
[51:30] anything, make sure it's actually a content issue&nbsp; and not a backlinks issue. If the page never had&nbsp;&nbsp; many referring domains to begin with, updating&nbsp; the content probably won't help. But if it has&nbsp;&nbsp; links and the content is just outdated, that's a&nbsp; high potential opportunity. So now you know how to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[51:47] create and update content that AI actually wants&nbsp; to site. But creating great content is only half&nbsp;&nbsp; the equation. You also need to get mentioned on&nbsp; other people's content, the pages AI is already&nbsp;&nbsp; pulling from. And that's exactly what we'll&nbsp; cover in the next lesson. I'll see you there.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[52:03] Hey, it's Samo and welcome to the second lesson&nbsp; in this module, which is on earning mentions&nbsp;&nbsp; and citations. Now, in the last lesson, we talked&nbsp; about creating content that gets cited. But here's&nbsp;&nbsp; the thing. A lot of AEO isn't about what's on&nbsp; your site. It's about getting mentioned on other&nbsp;&nbsp;
[52:19] people's pages. And not just any pages, the ones&nbsp; AI wants to pull from. Branded web mentions are so&nbsp;&nbsp; important that in our study of 75,000 brands, they&nbsp; had the strongest correlation with visibility in&nbsp;&nbsp;
[52:31] Google's AI overviews, stronger than backlinks,&nbsp; referring domains, and even domain rating. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; in this lesson, I'm going to show you the three&nbsp; types of pages you should be getting mentioned on&nbsp;&nbsp; and how to find the ones that matter most. Let's&nbsp; get started. So, I like to think about mention&nbsp;&nbsp;
[52:46] sources in three tiers. And the reason I use tiers&nbsp; is because not all mentions are created equal.&nbsp;&nbsp; Where you get mentioned matters just as much as&nbsp; how often you get mentioned. According to our&nbsp;&nbsp; data, we found that getting mentioned on highly&nbsp; linked pages has a 0.7 correlation with appearing&nbsp;&nbsp;
[53:03] in Google's AI overviews. That's even higher&nbsp; than the general branded mentions correlation.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, the quality of the page you're on makes a&nbsp; huge difference. Now, let's talk about tier one&nbsp;&nbsp; mentions, which are found in third-party editorial&nbsp; content. These are the hardest mentions to earn,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[53:18] but they're also the most valuable. Think&nbsp; industry publications, review sites like&nbsp;&nbsp; Wire Cutter or Techraar, listicles and comparison&nbsp; posts on authoritative blogs, and YouTube reviews&nbsp;&nbsp; from creators in your space. Why are these so&nbsp; powerful? because they're exactly the kind of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[53:34] pages AI loves the site. Remember, 43.8% of Chat&nbsp; GPT citations are listicles and comparison pages.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, if you're mentioned on those pages, you're in&nbsp; the pool of content AI is already pulling from.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[53:49] Now, to find the right pages to go after,&nbsp; go to brand radar and enter your domain.&nbsp;&nbsp; Then, open the cited domains report. This shows&nbsp; you the top websites that AI is citing for topics&nbsp;&nbsp; related to your brand. You'll see the number of&nbsp; AI responses, the number of pages, and how often&nbsp;&nbsp;
[54:04] each brand is being mentioned. From here, you can&nbsp; identify which sites matter most for your niche.&nbsp;&nbsp; Maybe it's kbb.com for cars or cnet for tech&nbsp; or specific niche blogs in your industry. These&nbsp;&nbsp;
[54:16] are the sites where getting a mention can directly&nbsp; lead to AI visibility. Now, it's important to note&nbsp;&nbsp; that you don't have to wait for AI to start citing&nbsp; a page before you try to get on it. Instead, look&nbsp;&nbsp;
[54:28] for pages that already have a lot of links and&nbsp; cover your topic. Even if they're not cited now,&nbsp;&nbsp; there's a good chance that they'll be cited at&nbsp; some point. You can use content explorer for this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Search for your title and add title colon best&nbsp; or title colon versus along with a minus operator&nbsp;&nbsp;
[54:46] before your brand name. This will surface&nbsp; listicles and comparison posts in your niche&nbsp;&nbsp; where your brand isn't mentioned. Then filter for&nbsp; pages with a good number of referring domains.&nbsp;&nbsp; Next up are tier 2 mentions which can be found on&nbsp; user generated content and community platforms.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[55:03] This includes Reddit, Quora,&nbsp; niche forums and community sites,&nbsp;&nbsp; and these matter more than you might think. Reddit&nbsp; is one of the most frequently cited sources by&nbsp;&nbsp; Chat GBT. It's also one of the foundational&nbsp; training sources for large language models.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[55:16] The play here isn't to spam Reddit threads with&nbsp; your brand name. That'll backfire fast. Instead,&nbsp;&nbsp; find threads where people are asking questions&nbsp; your product or expertise can genuinely answer.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[55:28] If someone's asking what's the best tool for&nbsp; X and your product is actually a good fit,&nbsp;&nbsp; contribute a real answer. You can find these&nbsp; threads through brand radar as well. Look at&nbsp;&nbsp; the cited domains report and see if reddit.com&nbsp; shows up for your space. If it does, dig into&nbsp;&nbsp;
[55:43] which specific threads AI is pulling from and&nbsp; join the conversations that are already happening.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, if you want to find niche specific Reddit&nbsp; pages that are already ranking well in Google,&nbsp;&nbsp; you can go to site explorer, enter reddit.com,&nbsp; and open the organic keywords report.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[55:59] Filter for keywords ranking in the top five,&nbsp; and add your niche terms to the include filter.&nbsp;&nbsp; And now you've got a list of Reddit pages that are&nbsp; already ranking well in Google and are related to&nbsp;&nbsp; your space. And you can do the exact same thing&nbsp; for niche forums and Q&amp;A sites. Wherever your&nbsp;&nbsp;
[56:16] target audience is having conversations about&nbsp; problems that you solve, that's where you want&nbsp;&nbsp; to be present. Finally, we have tier three, which&nbsp; are your own properties. Some brands own multiple&nbsp;&nbsp; domains. At for example, has detail.com&nbsp; and blogger genen. If these properties&nbsp;&nbsp;
[56:31] are authoritative in their own right, they can&nbsp; serve as additional citation sources for AI.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, even though you don't have the resources to&nbsp; run multiple sites, the principle still applies.&nbsp;&nbsp; Your YouTube channel, your podcast, your LinkedIn&nbsp; content, these are all indexed and can all show&nbsp;&nbsp;
[56:48] up as sources AI pulls from. Basically, the more&nbsp; places your brand appears in a positive topically&nbsp;&nbsp; relevant way, the more training examples AI has&nbsp; to learn from. Now, earning mentions is one thing,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[57:00] but you also need to keep track of them because&nbsp; mentions can disappear. pages get updated, lists&nbsp;&nbsp; get refreshed, and your brand can get removed&nbsp; without you ever knowing. And on the flip side,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[57:12] sometimes AI picks up wrong information about&nbsp; your brand from outdated or inaccurate sources.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, it's worth doing a regular mention audit. In&nbsp; Brand Radar, you can track your overall mention&nbsp;&nbsp; trends over time. Look for any drops in mention&nbsp; volume. If you find a page that was previously&nbsp;&nbsp;
[57:29] mentioning you, but your brand was removed during&nbsp; an update, that might be worth investigating. And&nbsp;&nbsp; pay attention to sentiment, too. Are AI responses&nbsp; about your brand accurate? Are they positive?&nbsp;&nbsp; If you spot misinformation, your best move is&nbsp; to update your own content first and then reach&nbsp;&nbsp;
[57:46] out to the publisher to request a correction.&nbsp; The faster you fix inaccurate mentions, the&nbsp;&nbsp; less time AI has to learn from them. So, between&nbsp; this lesson and the last one, you've got a clear&nbsp;&nbsp; playbook for earning AI visibility through content&nbsp; and mentions. But there's one platform we haven't&nbsp;&nbsp;
[58:03] talked about yet that deserves its own lesson, and&nbsp; that's YouTube. I'll see you in the next lesson.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hey, it's Ammo and welcome to lesson three, which&nbsp; is on YouTube optimization for AI visibility. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp; in the last two lessons, we covered how to create&nbsp; content that gets cited and how to earn mentions&nbsp;&nbsp;
[58:19] on other people's pages. But there's one platform&nbsp; that deserves its own conversation, and that's&nbsp;&nbsp; YouTube. Why? Because YouTube is the most cited&nbsp; domain in Google's AI overviews. And get this,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[58:32] according to our data, YouTube mentions have&nbsp; a 0.737 correlation with chat GBT visibility.&nbsp;&nbsp; That's the strongest correlation of any factor&nbsp; we study. And there's a reason for that. GBT4&nbsp;&nbsp;
[58:45] was trained on over a million hours of YouTube&nbsp; transcripts. So YouTube isn't just a platform&nbsp;&nbsp; AI sites, it's a platform AI learns from. So,&nbsp; in this lesson, I'm going to walk you through&nbsp;&nbsp; a three-step process to get your YouTube&nbsp; videos in front of AI. Let's get started.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[59:02] So, the first step is to find what's already&nbsp; working on YouTube in your niche. And the key&nbsp;&nbsp; idea here is that you want to target what I call&nbsp; search hits rather than viral hits. A viral hit&nbsp;&nbsp; can get you a spike of views and it can keep&nbsp; spreading based on a YouTube user's interests.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[59:18] But once the YouTube algorithm has exhausted&nbsp; the interested people, it dies. a search hit.&nbsp;&nbsp; It gets you consistent traffic from both Google&nbsp; and YouTube search month after month because&nbsp;&nbsp; people are actively searching for that topic. And&nbsp; search hits are exactly the kind of videos AI is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[59:35] likely to pull from. And that's because if Google&nbsp; is already ranking a YouTube video for a keyword,&nbsp;&nbsp; there's a good chance AI overviews will site it,&nbsp; too. On top of that, titles for search videos&nbsp;&nbsp; tend to be very clear about what the video is&nbsp; about, whereas viral hits, not so much. So,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[59:52] here's how to find these topics. Go to site&nbsp; explorer and enter www.youtube.com/watch. Then, open the organic keywords report. This shows&nbsp; you every keyword that YouTube videos are ranking&nbsp;&nbsp; for in Google. Now, filter for keyword rankings&nbsp; in the top three and add your niche terms to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:00:08] the include filter. What you'll get is a list of&nbsp; topics where YouTube videos are already ranking&nbsp;&nbsp; at the top of Google and are related to your&nbsp; space. Now, let's move on to the second step,&nbsp;&nbsp; which is to actually create videos that rank.&nbsp; Once you found your topics, you need to make&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:00:24] sure your video is set up to rank in Google. And&nbsp; there's a checklist I follow for this. First,&nbsp;&nbsp; your title needs to contain the keyword people are&nbsp; searching for. This isn't the place for clever or&nbsp;&nbsp; clickbaity titles. If the keyword is how to use&nbsp; Google Docs, that should be right in your title.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:00:41] Save the creativity for the thumbnail. The&nbsp; title handles the keyword. The thumbnail&nbsp;&nbsp; sells the click. Second, your description needs&nbsp; to be a real summary of the video. Just write a&nbsp;&nbsp; summary of what your video covers and add your&nbsp; target keyword in the first couple of lines.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:00:56] Google reads this, AI reads this, and viewers&nbsp; read it, so make a count. Third, add timestamps.&nbsp;&nbsp; Timestamps turn into YouTube chapters, and those&nbsp; chapters can show up in Google for specific&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:01:09] queries. So, if your video covers five tips and&nbsp; someone searches for tip number three, Google&nbsp;&nbsp; can link directly to that chapter. It's basically&nbsp; free extra visibility for like 2 minutes of work.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:01:22] Fourth, say the keyword in your video. And&nbsp; this one's important. Google understands audio.&nbsp;&nbsp; Liz Reed, who's VP of search at Google, has&nbsp; said that Google can understand audio content&nbsp;&nbsp; and video content. So, if your video is&nbsp; about the best protein powder for repair,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:01:37] actually say those words in the video. Don't put&nbsp; it in the title and hope for the best. And fifth,&nbsp;&nbsp; match the format to what's already ranking.&nbsp; If tutorials are dominating the search results&nbsp;&nbsp; for your keyword, make a tutorial. If listicles&nbsp; rank, make a listicle. Don't fight the format.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:01:54] Look at what's working and match it because&nbsp; you're matching the intent of the searcher.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, none of this is complicated, but it's the&nbsp; difference between a video that gets buried and&nbsp;&nbsp; a video that shows up every time someone searches&nbsp; for that topic. And that brings us to the third&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:02:09] step, which is to layer in AI visibility. So, at&nbsp; this point, you've got a video that's optimized&nbsp;&nbsp; for Google search. But here's where you take it a&nbsp; step further for SEO. Go to Brand Radar and enter&nbsp;&nbsp; a popular brand or YouTube channel and go to the&nbsp; topics report. Then set a filter where the domain&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:02:25] mentioned is YouTube.com. Now, you can see exactly&nbsp; which queries AI is pulling YouTube videos into.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, go and create content around those topics.&nbsp; And as for how to actually rank there, it comes&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:02:37] back to what we already covered, pick the right&nbsp; keyword, make a thorough, well optimized video,&nbsp;&nbsp; and be comprehensive without wasting people's&nbsp; time. And here's one more thing to keep in mind.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:02:49] Remember, every video you publish on YouTube&nbsp; is potentially training data for AI models.&nbsp;&nbsp; So even if a video doesn't get cited right away,&nbsp; the content is being absorbed. The more helpful,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:03:02] specific, and well ststructured your videos&nbsp; are, the more likely AI is to learn from them&nbsp;&nbsp; and eventually recommend them. So, that covers&nbsp; content mentions, and YouTube, but there's&nbsp;&nbsp; a technical side to AEO that most people skip&nbsp; entirely. Things like structured data, robots.txt,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:03:19] and making sure AI can actually access your site&nbsp; in the first place. And that's what we'll cover in&nbsp;&nbsp; the next lesson. I'll see you there. Hey, it's&nbsp; Samo and welcome to the fourth lesson in this&nbsp;&nbsp; module, which is on the technical side of AEO.&nbsp; Now, I know technical can sound intimidating,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:03:35] but this lesson isn't about rewriting your site's&nbsp; code. It's about making sure that AI can actually&nbsp;&nbsp; access and understand your content. And while&nbsp; access and understand might sound rudimentary&nbsp;&nbsp; for some of you, the reality is a lot of sites are&nbsp; accidentally blocking AI without even knowing it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:03:54] According to our data, around 5.9% of 140&nbsp; million websites are blocking GBTO, which is&nbsp;&nbsp; Open AI's crawler. That's millions of sites that&nbsp; are invisible to ChatGBT. So, in this lesson, I've&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:04:08] got six technical checks and tips for you to make&nbsp; sure AI can find you so that it can promote you.&nbsp;&nbsp; Let's get started. So, the first thing&nbsp; you need to check is your robots.txt file.&nbsp;&nbsp; Robots.txt txt is a file on your site that&nbsp; tells crawlers what they can and can't access.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:04:26] And the thing is, it's not just Google's crawler&nbsp; you need to think about anymore. There are now&nbsp;&nbsp; dozens of AI specific bots that crawl the web.&nbsp; The main ones you should know about are GPTbot&nbsp;&nbsp; and OAI searchbot from OpenAI, Claudebot from&nbsp; Anthropic, and Google extended from Google. If&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:04:43] any of these are blocked in your robots.txt, txt,&nbsp; you're asking those AI platforms not to crawl your&nbsp;&nbsp; content. And assuming they obey your rules, they&nbsp; sure won't be recommending your pages then if they&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:04:55] don't know what's on them. Now, you might not have&nbsp; blocked these bots intentionally, but a lot of&nbsp;&nbsp; sites inherit robots.txt rules from templates or&nbsp; old configurations, and some platforms add blocks&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:05:07] by default. For example, Cloudflare has a feature&nbsp; called instruct AI bot traffic with robots.txt.&nbsp;&nbsp; That's now enabled by default. When this is on,&nbsp; Cloudflare automatically updates your robots.txt&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:05:21] to signal that your content shouldn't be used for&nbsp; AI training. So, if your site is on Cloudflare,&nbsp;&nbsp; you could be blocking AI crawlers without even&nbsp; realizing it. So, the first step is simple. Go to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:05:33] your doommain.com/root.txt and look for any lines&nbsp; that mention GPTbot, Claudebot, Google extended,&nbsp;&nbsp; or OAI searchbot. If you see a disallow rule next&nbsp; to any of those, you're blocking that AI crawler.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:05:48] You can also use HF site audit to check this. Run&nbsp; a crawl on your site and it'll flag any robots.txt&nbsp;&nbsp; rules that might be blocking AI crawlers. Now,&nbsp; while we're on the topic of files AI reads,&nbsp;&nbsp; I want to make a quick note on something&nbsp; you might have heard of called LLM.txt.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:06:04] This is a proposed standard kind of like&nbsp; robots.txt, but specifically designed to&nbsp;&nbsp; tell AI systems about your site. The idea is&nbsp; that you create a file atyoudommain.com/lms.txt
[01:06:17] that gives AI a summary of who you are, what your&nbsp; site covers, and where to find your most important&nbsp;&nbsp; content. It's useful in theory, but as of right&nbsp; now, no major LLM provider officially supports it.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:06:31] OpenAI doesn't use it. Anthropic publishes one&nbsp; on their own site, but hasn't confirmed their&nbsp;&nbsp; crawlers actually read it, and Google hasn't&nbsp; adopted it either. So, should you create one?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:06:43] Well, I don't think it'll hurt you, but I wouldn't&nbsp; prioritize it over the other things we've talked&nbsp;&nbsp; about in this lesson. Robots.txt is still the&nbsp; file that actually matters most right now.&nbsp;&nbsp; All right, the second thing to check is how your&nbsp; site handles JavaScript. Some AI platforms can&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:06:58] render JavaScript and some can't. Without getting&nbsp; too technical, Gemini and Copilot can render JS&nbsp;&nbsp; while ChatGpt's crawler does not. So if&nbsp; your content relies on JavaScript to load,&nbsp;&nbsp; which is common with single page apps and&nbsp; some React or Angular frameworks, ChatGBT&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:07:14] literally can't see your content. It visits&nbsp; the page and gets an empty shell. The fix here&nbsp;&nbsp; is serverside rendering, which means your server&nbsp; sends the fully rendered HTML to the crawler&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:07:26] instead of relying on JavaScript to build the page&nbsp; in the browser. If you're already doing this for&nbsp;&nbsp; SEO, you're covered. If not, it's worth looking&nbsp; into, especially if AI visibility matters to you.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:07:38] A quick way to test this is to disable JavaScript&nbsp; in your browser and visit your own site.&nbsp;&nbsp; If the content disappears, you have a JavaScript&nbsp; rendering issue that's affecting AI crawlers, too.&nbsp;&nbsp; The third thing to consider is page speed. Now,&nbsp; you might be thinking, page speed is an SEO thing,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:07:54] not an AEO thing, but it can actually matter more&nbsp; for AI retrieval than for traditional search.&nbsp;&nbsp; When AI systems retrieve information in&nbsp; real time, they're fetching, parsing,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:08:07] and chunking your pages on the fly. And&nbsp; if your page takes too long to load,&nbsp;&nbsp; it can get dropped before it's even scored.&nbsp; So, it won't be making it into an AAI response,&nbsp;&nbsp; even if the content is great. The good news is&nbsp; that if you've already optimized your core web&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:08:22] vitals for SEO, you're most of the way there. Fast&nbsp; loading pages with clean HTML benefit both Google&nbsp;&nbsp; and AI systems. And that brings us to the&nbsp; fourth tip. Create clean HTML structure.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:08:35] This one's straightforward. AI systems parse your&nbsp; content by following your HTML structure. So,&nbsp;&nbsp; if your headings are logical, your sections are&nbsp; well organized, and your paragraphs are focused&nbsp;&nbsp; on one idea each. AI has an easier time extracting&nbsp; the right information. This ties directly back to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:08:53] the content principles we covered in lesson 3.1,&nbsp; bluff, atomic content, and entity rich writing.&nbsp;&nbsp; Those principles aren't just about writing style.&nbsp; They're about making your content technically&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:09:06] parsible for AI. So, when you're structuring&nbsp; your pages, use proper heading hierarchy.&nbsp;&nbsp; H1 for the title, H2s for the main sections, and&nbsp; H3s for subsections. And make sure each section&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:09:18] can stand on its own because AI might chunk your&nbsp; content at any heading boundary. The fifth tip&nbsp;&nbsp; is about schema markup. Schema markup, which is&nbsp; also called structured data, is code you add to&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:09:30] your pages to help search engines understand your&nbsp; content. Things like article schema, FAQ page,&nbsp;&nbsp; how-to, and local business. Now, does it help&nbsp; with AEO? Honestly, the evidence is mixed. There's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:09:44] no confirmed data that adding schema directly&nbsp; improves your chances of being cited by AI, but it&nbsp;&nbsp; doesn't hurt. And if you're already using it for&nbsp; SEO, there's no reason to remove it. I wouldn't&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:09:56] spend a ton of time on schema specifically for&nbsp; AEO, but if you're setting up a new page, adding&nbsp;&nbsp; the right schema types is a good habit that makes&nbsp; your content easier for any system to understand.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:10:08] All right, the sixth tip that I have for you&nbsp; is to optimize for AI hallucinated URLs. AI&nbsp;&nbsp; assistants sometimes make up URLs that don't exist&nbsp; on your site. They'll recommend a page to a user,&nbsp;&nbsp; the user clicks it, and they hit a 404 error. And&nbsp; this happens a lot more often than you'd expect.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:10:26] According to our data, AI assistants send visitors&nbsp; to 404 pages 2.87 times more often than Google&nbsp;&nbsp; search does. And Chat GPT is the biggest offender&nbsp; with about 1% of its clicked URLs leading to 404&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:10:41] pages. Now, rather than letting that 404&nbsp; be the end of a visitor's browsing journey,&nbsp;&nbsp; you should either fix or optimize those pages to&nbsp; get more out of them. You can do that by checking&nbsp;&nbsp; your analytics for pages that are getting traffic&nbsp; from AI referers but returning a 404 status.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:10:57] If you spot a hallucinated URL that's getting&nbsp; consistent traffic, set up a redirect to the most&nbsp;&nbsp; relevant real page on your site. That way, you're&nbsp; capturing traffic that would otherwise be lost.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, while creating content and getting cited is&nbsp; a big part of AEO, it's only part of the picture.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:11:14] You also need to know if it's actually working.&nbsp; And that's exactly what we'll be covering in&nbsp;&nbsp; module four, which is all about measuring and&nbsp; tracking your AI visibility. I'll see you there.&nbsp;&nbsp; Hey, it's Samo and welcome to module four in&nbsp; HF's AI search course. Now, in module three,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:11:30] we covered how to create content, earn mentions,&nbsp; and optimize YouTube videos to get mentioned and&nbsp;&nbsp; cited in AI search. And we also talked about how&nbsp; you can optimize for the technical side of AEO.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:11:42] So, now you've got a playbook for execution.&nbsp; But here's the thing. None of that matters&nbsp;&nbsp; if you can't measure whether it's working. And&nbsp; that's what this module is all about. Now, I'll&nbsp;&nbsp; be upfront with you. Measuring AI visibility is a&nbsp; lot harder than measuring results from traditional&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:11:58] SEO. With SEO, you've got Google Search Console&nbsp; giving you impressions, clicks, and rankings.&nbsp;&nbsp; With AI search, a lot of that data either doesn't&nbsp; exist or is hidden from you. But that doesn't mean&nbsp;&nbsp; you're flying blind, because there are three ways&nbsp; to track your AI visibility. And in this lesson,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:12:15] I'm going to walk you through how to&nbsp; set each one up. Let's get started.&nbsp;&nbsp; So, the first thing you should track is AI&nbsp; referral traffic to your site. This is when&nbsp;&nbsp; someone clicks a link from Chat GPT, Perplexity,&nbsp; Claude, or another AI platform and lands on your&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:12:29] site. In analytics tools like Google or HF's web&nbsp; analytics, it'll show up as a referral visit.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is helpful in knowing how many people are&nbsp; finding you because of AI. But here's where it&nbsp;&nbsp; gets tricky. Not all AI platforms pass referral&nbsp; data properly. Some of them strip it out entirely,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:12:47] which means the visit shows up as direct traffic&nbsp; in G4. And if it does that, then there's no real&nbsp;&nbsp; way to know that the traffic came from AI. For&nbsp; example, ChatGpt source links in search results&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:12:59] pass referral data properly. But incontent links&nbsp; on paid accounts use a no referral attribute,&nbsp;&nbsp; so those visits are actually invisible. Claude&nbsp; tracks properly. Perplexity tracks on the web&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:13:11] but not on its desktop app. Copilot tracks on the&nbsp; web but not on Windows. And Grock doesn't pass&nbsp;&nbsp; referral data at all. So the key takeaway here is&nbsp; this. Use AI referral traffic to understand the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:13:24] general trend of which AI platforms are sending&nbsp; you customers and visitors. But understand&nbsp;&nbsp; that what you see in your analytics is likely an&nbsp; undercount. Now with that caveat out of the way,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:13:39] group that isolates AI traffic. Go to admin,&nbsp; then data display, then channel groups. Copy&nbsp;&nbsp; your default channel group, and add a new channel&nbsp; called AI traffic. Then set the source to match a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:13:53] reax that includes chatgpt.com, perplexity,&nbsp; gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com,&nbsp;&nbsp; claw.ai, and deepseeek.com. Once that's set up,&nbsp; go to reports, then acquisition, then traffic&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:14:09] acquisition, and select your new channel group.&nbsp; Now you can see the traffic AI is sending you,&nbsp;&nbsp; the pages it's directing people to, and how&nbsp; those visitors behave compared to other channels.&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, if you want something simpler than G4, Hrefs&nbsp; has a free tool called Web Analytics that does&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:14:26] this automatically. It has a built-in AI search&nbsp; channel, so you don't have to set up any custom&nbsp;&nbsp; groups. It also separates unknown traffic&nbsp; from direct traffic, which J4 doesn't do.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:14:38] That means you can get a clearer picture of&nbsp; where your traffic is actually coming from.&nbsp;&nbsp; All right, so once you've got AI traffic set up,&nbsp; there are two things I'd pay attention to. First,&nbsp;&nbsp; look at which pages are getting AI traffic. These&nbsp; are the pages AI is already recommending to users.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:14:53] Make sure you keep these up to date, keep them&nbsp; accurate, and have clear calls to action. If AI is&nbsp;&nbsp; sending people to a page that hasn't been updated&nbsp; in a year, it'll probably stop sooner than you'd&nbsp;&nbsp; like. And second, look at your important pages&nbsp; that aren't getting AI traffic. If you've got a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:15:10] key product page or a highv value blog post that's&nbsp; getting zero AI referrals that should be getting&nbsp;&nbsp; it, that's worth investigating. It could be a&nbsp; content issue, a crawling issue, or it could just&nbsp;&nbsp; mean AI isn't surfacing that topic yet. The second&nbsp; thing to track is AI bot activity on your site.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:15:28] This one's a bit different. Instead of tracking&nbsp; the humans who click through from AI, you're&nbsp;&nbsp; tracking the AI bots themselves, the crawlers that&nbsp; visit your site to read and index your content.&nbsp;&nbsp; And here's something most people don't realize. AI&nbsp; bots visit your pages far more often than humans&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:15:46] do. So, the pages they're hitting the most are&nbsp; likely your strongest citation candidates. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp; there are two types of AI bots to know about. The&nbsp; first type is training bots like GPTbot and Google&nbsp;&nbsp; extended. These take your content and use it to&nbsp; train AI models. The second type is search and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:16:03] citation bots like ChatGpt user and OI search&nbsp; bot. These fetch your pages in real time when&nbsp;&nbsp; a user asks a question. These are the ones that&nbsp; can actually drive referral traffic to your site.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:16:16] To track bot activity, you can use server logs&nbsp; if you have access to them. But the easier way is&nbsp;&nbsp; through HF's bot analytics, which has a Cloudflare&nbsp; integration that shows you exactly which AI bots&nbsp;&nbsp; are visiting your site, how often, and which&nbsp; pages they're focusing on. And this works with&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:16:31] a free Cloudflare plan, too. Now, what you're&nbsp; looking for here are patterns. If a citation bot&nbsp;&nbsp; is hitting a specific page repeatedly, that page&nbsp; is likely being used as a source in AI responses.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:16:43] And if there are important pages that bots aren't&nbsp; visiting at all, that could mean they're hard to&nbsp;&nbsp; discover, which ties back to the internal linking&nbsp; and site structure we talked about in module 3.&nbsp;&nbsp; All right, the third thing to track is&nbsp; self-reported attribution. This one's the simplest&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:16:58] to explain, but it might be the most important&nbsp; for proving the value of AEO to your team&nbsp;&nbsp; and to your clients. You see, a lot of the impact&nbsp; of AI visibility doesn't show up in your analytics&nbsp;&nbsp; at all. Someone asks ChatGBT for a recommendation.&nbsp; They get your brand name, then they go to the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:17:14] browser bar and they type it directly in there.&nbsp; That shows up as direct traffic or they Google&nbsp;&nbsp; your brand name after hearing about you from AI.&nbsp; That's going to show up as organic search traffic.&nbsp;&nbsp; So the only way to capture this is to ask people&nbsp; directly. Add a how did you hear about us question&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:17:30] to your signup flow, your checkout process or&nbsp; your post purchase survey. include options like&nbsp;&nbsp; AI assistant, chat GPT, Perplexity, etc.,&nbsp; and AI search like Google AI overviews.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:17:43] At Hrefs, around 3% of our conversions came from&nbsp; AI over the last year based on self-reported data.&nbsp;&nbsp; And our AI visitors convert at a much higher rate&nbsp; than organic search visitors. But we would never&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:17:56] have known that without asking. So, if you only&nbsp; do one thing from this lesson, add that question&nbsp;&nbsp; to an entry survey. It's the most direct way to&nbsp; connect AI visibility to actual business results.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:18:08] Now, these three pillars work best when you&nbsp; use them together. Referral traffic tells you&nbsp;&nbsp; what AI is sending to your site. Bot analytics&nbsp; tell you what content AI is paying attention to.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:18:20] And self-attribution tells you what's actually&nbsp; driving revenue. No single source gives you&nbsp;&nbsp; the full picture, but together they give you a&nbsp; pretty clear view of how AI is interacting with&nbsp;&nbsp; your brand and where you should focus your&nbsp; efforts. And on top of these three pillars,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:18:36] you've still got brand radar tracking your AI&nbsp; visibility across platforms, which I showed you&nbsp;&nbsp; how to do back in module 2. So now that you've&nbsp; got your analytics set up, the big question is,&nbsp;&nbsp; is all of this actually worth it? What's the ROI&nbsp; of AEO? and what should you actually be doing on a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:18:53] weekly and monthly basis to keep growing your AI&nbsp; visibility? That's what we'll cover in the next&nbsp;&nbsp; and final lesson. I'll see you there. Hey, it's&nbsp; Ammo and welcome to the final lesson in HF's AI&nbsp;&nbsp; search course. Now, throughout this course, we've&nbsp; covered everything from how AI search works to how&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:19:10] to find the right keywords and prompts to creating&nbsp; and optimizing content, how you can earn mentions,&nbsp;&nbsp; and even how to set up your analytics for AEO. But&nbsp; there are three questions I haven't answered yet&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:19:22] that are super critical to know. Is AEO actually&nbsp; worth it? How do you know if you're making&nbsp;&nbsp; progress? And what should you actually be doing&nbsp; on a regular basis to keep growing? So that's what&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:19:34] this lesson is about. Let's get into it. So let's&nbsp; start with a big question. Is AEO actually worth&nbsp;&nbsp; your time? Now I'll be honest. If you look at raw&nbsp; traffic numbers, AI search is still relatively&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:19:46] small. According to our data, AI referral traffic&nbsp; accounts for about 0.25% of a site's total traffic&nbsp;&nbsp; on average. And Google still sends about 210 times&nbsp; more traffic than the top AI platforms combined.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20:01] So, if you're looking at this purely from a&nbsp; traffic standpoint, you might think it's not worth&nbsp;&nbsp; it. But here's where the story gets interesting.&nbsp; At Hrefs, our AI visitors convert at 23 times the&nbsp;&nbsp; rate of organic search visitors. And we're not&nbsp; alone. Verscell is seeing 10% conversion rates&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20:18] from AI traffic. Tally says AI is their largest&nbsp; acquisition channel and helped boost their ARR by&nbsp;&nbsp; a million dollars. Think about that for a second.&nbsp; The traffic volume is small, but the quality of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20:30] traffic is significantly higher. And the reason&nbsp; for that is simple. When AI recommends you,&nbsp;&nbsp; it's already explained to the user why you're a&nbsp; good fit. So the traffic arrives prequalified.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20:43] They're not browsing. They're ready to act. And on&nbsp; top of conversion quality, AI traffic is growing&nbsp;&nbsp; fast. It's grown about 9.7 times since last&nbsp; year. Chat GPT alone has grown 85% since January,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:20:58] it now sends more traffic than Reddit or LinkedIn.&nbsp; So, while the numbers are still relatively small&nbsp;&nbsp; today, the trajectory, it's pretty clear.&nbsp; AI traffic is only going to grow from here.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:21:11] But here's what I think a lot of people miss&nbsp; about AEO. The real value isn't just the&nbsp;&nbsp; clickable traffic. It's the brand awareness that&nbsp; happens inside the AI conversation. Every time AI&nbsp;&nbsp; recommends your product or mentions your brand,&nbsp; that's an impression you never had before. And&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:21:28] most of those impressions never result in a click&nbsp; to your site. They result in someone googling your&nbsp;&nbsp; brand name later or engaging with your brand&nbsp; on social media when they see it in their feed&nbsp;&nbsp; because they recognize it. So, the way I think&nbsp; about it is this. AEO isn't an alternative to SEO.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:21:45] It's a new layer on top of it. And the brands&nbsp; that build that layer now, while it's still early,&nbsp;&nbsp; are going to have a massive advantage as AI&nbsp; search continues to grow. Now, the main downside,&nbsp;&nbsp; which we talked about in the last lesson,&nbsp; is that it's not perfectly measurable.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:22:01] But just because you can't measure something&nbsp; precisely, it doesn't mean it's not working.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's kind of like brand marketing. You&nbsp; can't track every billboard to a sale,&nbsp;&nbsp; but you know it shapes how people think about you.&nbsp; AEO is the same way. So, how do you know if you're&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:22:16] making progress? Well, if you followed along in&nbsp; module 2, you set up your brand radar baseline&nbsp;&nbsp; and did your first brand gap analysis. Now, it's&nbsp; time to go back and check how things have changed.&nbsp;&nbsp; Pull up your brand radar dashboard and look&nbsp; at four key things. First, AI share of voice.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:22:33] How have you moved relative to your competitors?&nbsp; If your share has grown, your efforts are working.&nbsp;&nbsp; If it stayed flat while a competitor has grown,&nbsp; you need to dig into why. At HFS, we're tracking&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:22:45] queries and prompts at scale. So, brand radar, it&nbsp; gives you a really good look at the overall trend.&nbsp;&nbsp; Second, look at cited domains. Are new domains&nbsp; citing you that weren't before? This tells you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:22:58] if your mention earning efforts from module 3 are&nbsp; paying off. Third, topic coverage. Have you closed&nbsp;&nbsp; the gaps you identified? Are there new topics&nbsp; where you're showing up where you weren't before?&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:23:10] And fourth, mention sentiment. Is AI saying&nbsp; accurate and positive things about your brand?&nbsp;&nbsp; This is especially important because AI&nbsp; doesn't just repeat what you put on your site.&nbsp;&nbsp; It synthesizes information from everywhere. I'd&nbsp; recommend doing this as a quick monthly check and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:23:27] do a deeper competitive audit quarterly. Now,&nbsp; while we're on the topic of what AI says about&nbsp;&nbsp; you, there's something important that you need to&nbsp; be aware of. AI is vulnerable to misinformation.&nbsp;&nbsp; And I don't mean it in a theoretical way. We&nbsp; actually tested it. We created a completely fake&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:23:44] luxury brand, planted three contradicting sources&nbsp; about it across a blog, Reddit, and Medium, and&nbsp;&nbsp; then asked eight different AI platforms about the&nbsp; brand. The results were pretty alarming. After the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:23:56] fake sources were planted, Gemini and Perplexity&nbsp; repeated the misinformation in 37 to 39% of their&nbsp;&nbsp; answers. They cited fake founders, fake cities,&nbsp; fake pricing stories, all presented as verified&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:24:09] facts. Now, the good news is that Chat GPT was&nbsp; much more robust. It stayed under 7% and cited&nbsp;&nbsp; the brand's official FAQ in 84% of its answers.&nbsp; But the point is that not all AI platforms are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:24:22] equally resistant to bad information. So, what&nbsp; does this mean for you? It means you need to fill&nbsp;&nbsp; every information gap about your brand with&nbsp; specific and official content. Create an FAQ&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:24:34] that directly addresses common questions.&nbsp; Use specific numbers and dates and facts,&nbsp;&nbsp; not just vague claims. Because when AI has to&nbsp; choose between vague truth and specific fiction,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:24:46] it tends to choose the specific fiction. Also,&nbsp; monitor what AI is saying about you regularly.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you spot inaccurate information, the fastest&nbsp; fix is to publish content on your own site that&nbsp;&nbsp; directly contradicts it and then work on getting&nbsp; the third-party source corrected. All right,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25:02] so let's bring this all together with your AEO&nbsp; action plan. If you're wondering what to do first,&nbsp;&nbsp; here's what I'd focus on this week. Check your&nbsp; robots.txt for AI bot access. This takes about&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25:14] 5 minutes max, and it's the most common technical&nbsp; blocker. Make sure AI can crawl your site. Next,&nbsp;&nbsp; set up your AI analytics. Create the AI traffic&nbsp; channel in G4 or set up HF's web analytics. Add a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25:28] how did you hear about us question to your signup&nbsp; or checkout flow. Start measuring from day one so&nbsp;&nbsp; you can see how you progress over time. Next,&nbsp; update your most important pages for freshness.&nbsp;&nbsp; Remember, AI content is 25.7% fresher than what&nbsp; ranks in traditional search. Pick your top five&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25:46] to 10 pages and make meaningful updates, new&nbsp; stats, updated examples, current information.&nbsp;&nbsp; Next up, run your brand gap analysis. Set&nbsp; up brand radar if you haven't already, and&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25:58] go through the process we covered in module two.&nbsp; Know where you stand before you start optimizing.&nbsp;&nbsp; And finally, identify your top 10 mention earning&nbsp; targets. Use the cited domains and pages reports&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26:11] in content explorer to find the pages where&nbsp; getting a mention would have the biggest impact&nbsp;&nbsp; on your AI visibility. And then on an ongoing&nbsp; basis, do a monthly brand radar check to track&nbsp;&nbsp; your progress in a quarterly competitive audit&nbsp; to catch bigger shifts and just rinse and repeat.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26:28] Everything I just mentioned is covered step by&nbsp; step in this course. So if you need a refresher&nbsp;&nbsp; on any of it, just go back to the relevant lesson&nbsp; and then execute. AI SEO or AEO is still early.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26:40] The tools are evolving, the data is getting&nbsp; better, and the opportunity is only going to grow.&nbsp;&nbsp; So the biggest advantage you can have right now&nbsp; is simply starting before everyone else does.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:26:52] Thanks for watching our AEO course&nbsp; and I'll see you in the next