Enhance Your SEO Strategy with AI Search Engine Optimisation
Introduction
For years, the Beauxhaus team has been helping B2B businesses drive traffic to their websites by optimising for Google search. However, the search landscape is rapidly expanding. While Google continues to be the dominant force, the emergence of AI-driven search tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity AI, and generative AI-powered assistants such as Bing Copilot means many users are now turning to conversational AI for answers.
Recent data shows significant momentum in this shift: ChatGPT reportedly now boasts 800 million weekly active users as of June 2025, doubling from 400 million just four months earlier in February. Meanwhile, Google's search market share has dipped below 90% for the first time since 2015, averaging 89.6% in late 2024 and continuing this trend through 2025.
This evolution means the way your target audience finds information is diversifying rapidly. So, how can your B2B business adapt its SEO strategy to maximise opportunities from this broadened search environment, including AI Visibility Optimization (AIVO)?
The Shift in Search Behaviour: The Evolving Search Landscape
While new AI-driven platforms are emerging, it's important to understand that search overall, including Google, is becoming increasingly AI-powered. This means optimising for both the foundational principles that Google’s sophisticated AI systems interpret and the unique behaviours of new conversational AI tools.
Google: The Reigning Search Giant, enhanced by AI
Google continues to process over 8.5 billion searches per day, leveraging highly advanced algorithms that are deeply integrated with artificial intelligence and machine learning.
These sophisticated systems prioritise content based on its relevance, authority, and engagement. While Google remains the dominant force, its approach to ranking is continually refined by AI, moving far beyond simple keyword matching to understand intent with greater depth and nuance.
The key factors influencing Google rankings, now deeply intertwined with its AI advancements, include:
Semantic Understanding & Search Intent: Google's AI models (evolving from BERT and MUM to the current Gemini 2.5 that powers AI Overviews) analyse queries and content semantically, ensuring a deeper match than just keywords. This means optimising for comprehensive topics, entities, and the full spectrum of user intent is paramount.
Authoritativeness & Trust (E-E-A-T): Google's AI heavily weighs Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). It helps Google identify truly reputable sources, making high-quality backlinks, genuine thought leadership, and demonstrable industry experience essential for establishing authority.
User Engagement: Google's AI interprets user signals like click-through rates, time on page, and bounce rates to gauge content quality and relevance. Satisfying the user's needs through engaging and helpful content is a key signal.
Technical SEO: A robust technical foundation, including site speed, mobile responsiveness, and structured data, enables Google's AI-powered crawlers to efficiently discover, understand, and index your content..
AI Search: How It Works Differently
Unlike Google's traditional result pages, generative AI-driven search tools like Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity AI, and the search capabilities within platforms like ChatGPT provide direct, conversational answers, synthesising information into new, coherent responses. They:
Provide immediate, succinct responses based on information processed from a vast corpus of training data and real-time web content that is crawled and indexed by search engines.
Reference authoritative sources such as news sites, academic articles, and high-ranking blogs, often providing direct citations to enable fact-checking.
Leverage advanced machine learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to predict user intent, building upon and often exceeding the semantic capabilities of traditional search engines. This enhanced understanding of natural language queries – especially conversational and long-tail keywords – makes natural language optimisation essential for AI visibility.
Embrace Multimodality: These tools are evolving to understand and respond to queries that include images, voice, and even video, allowing for more intuitive and diverse search experiences.
Integration with Existing Search Indexes: Some AI search tools, like ChatGPT, are powered by Bing's index, meaning that real-time data and Bing's ranking signals are critical for visibility. Google's AI Overviews, conversely, leverage Google's own vast index and ranking algorithms, often appearing prominently at the top of results.
Zero-Click Behaviour: With AI search platforms providing answers directly on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), a significant portion of queries, particularly informational ones, may result in 'zero-clicks' to external websites. This fundamentally alters traditional click-through rates and necessitates a shift in business strategy. Businesses should now focus heavily on establishing strong brand authority, ensuring their content is highly scannable and structured for AI summarisation, and appearing prominently within AI outputs. While direct traffic may decrease for some queries, the goal becomes brand visibility, thought leadership, and attracting users who seek deeper engagement to their sites. New metrics are emerging, such as brand mention frequency in AI responses and citation tracking (available through specialised tools), though comprehensive measurement solutions are still developing.
As you would imagine, there are ongoing discussions and concerns from publishers regarding the impact of AI Overviews on their traffic and revenue.
Mastering AI Search: Why One-Size-Fits-All Content No Longer Works
In the evolving landscape of AI-driven search, understanding how these platforms source information is paramount for effective marketing.
Recent analysis by Profound, based on a comprehensive dataset of 30 million citations from leading AI models like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity (spanning August 2024 to June 2025), sheds important light on this.
Their findings unequivocally demonstrate that the top 10 most-cited sources vary drastically across each platform, signaling a clear need for tailored strategies for maximum visibility.
Platform-Specific AI Optimisation Strategies
The Profound research reveals that a generic approach to AI search optimisation is insufficient. Each platform exhibits distinctly different citation preferences, demanding specialised strategies to truly maximise your reach and impact.
Important Note: The citation percentages mentioned below represent each platform’s share within their top 10 most-cited sources, not their total citation volume across the entire dataset. This distinction is vital for understanding the relative importance of different platforms for each AI search engine.
Perplexity AI: The Community Content Champion
Perplexity AI’s citation patterns reveal a strong preference for community-generated content, with nearly half (46.7%) of its top 10 most-cited sources originating from Reddit.
YouTube follows as a significant secondary source, accounting for 13.9% of citations. This heavy weighting indicates Perplexity's emphasis on real-time, user-generated discussions and engaging multimedia.
ChatGPT: Leaning on Traditional Authority
ChatGPT takes a more established route to authority, with Wikipedia claiming a remarkable 47.9% of its top 10 most-cited sources. Reddit still holds relevance, coming in at 11.3%.
Google AI Overviews: A More Balanced Approach
Google AI Overviews presents a more diverse citation distribution among its top sources. While YouTube holds significant weight at 18.8% of the top 10, Reddit actually edges it out slightly at 21%. Quora captures 14.3% of the top source citations, with LinkedIn also playing a substantial role at 13%. This balanced approach signals a need for a diversified content strategy.
How to Optimise Content for Chat GPT and other AI-Driven Search Engines
Reddit: The Universal Citation Champion
Reddit clearly emerges as an essential platform across all three AI search engines. Its significant influence among top sources (46.7% for Perplexity, 11.3% for ChatGPT, and 21% for Google AI Overviews) makes Reddit optimisation essential for comprehensive AI visibility.
Strategic Reddit Approach:
Community Identification: Research and engage with subreddits relevant to your industry, extending beyond just your direct product area.
Value-First Participation: Share insights, answer questions, and provide genuine help without overtly promoting your business. Reddit's community values authentic contribution over direct marketing.
Long-Form Content: Create detailed, educational posts that demonstrate thought leadership and can be referenced by AI tools seeking comprehensive answers.
Wikipedia: ChatGPT's Primary Source
With Wikipedia representing 47.9% of ChatGPT’s top 10 most-cited sources, maintaining an optimised Wikipedia presence is key for this AI model’s visibility.
Wikipedia Optimisation Strategy:
Company Page Maintenance: Ensure your Wikipedia page is current, well-sourced, and strictly follows Wikipedia's guidelines for notability and neutrality.
Industry Contribution: Contribute to broader industry pages where your expertise adds value, establishing your company as a knowledgeable source.
Citation Quality: Use high-quality, third-party sources to back claims about your company or industry contributions.
Regular Updates: Monitor and update pages with new achievements, partnerships, or industry developments that meet Wikipedia's notability standards.
Video Content: YouTube's AI Advantage
YouTube commands 18.8% of Google AI Overviews’ top source citations and 13.9% of Perplexity’s top references, making video content increasingly important for AI discoverability.
Video Content Strategy:
Short-Form Content: Create YouTube Shorts addressing common industry questions and pain points that AI tools frequently encounter.
Behind-the-Scenes Content: Develop 5-15 minute videos showcasing company culture, product development, or industry insights that humanise your brand.
Educational Series: Produce longer-format content (like podcast-style discussions) that establish thought leadership and provide comprehensive coverage of industry topics.
SEO-Optimised Descriptions: Ensure video descriptions are keyword-rich and provide clear, structured information that AI tools can easily parse and cite.
Professional Platform Presence: LinkedIn and Quora
LinkedIn accounts for 13% of Google AI Overviews’ top source citations, while Quora captures 14.3%, making professional platform engagement essential, particularly for B2B visibility.
LinkedIn Strategy:
Executive Thought Leadership: Encourage key executives to publish regular insights on industry trends, challenges, and solutions.
Employee-Generated Content (EGC): Develop a programme encouraging employees to share professional insights and company achievements.
Industry Discussion Participation: Actively engage in LinkedIn industry groups and comment thoughtfully on relevant posts.
Company Page Optimisation: Maintain an active company page with regular updates, case studies, and industry insights.
Quora Optimisation:
Expert Positioning: Identify questions in your expertise area and provide comprehensive, helpful answers that showcase your knowledge.
Industry Authority Building: Consistently answer questions related to your industry, building recognition as a go-to expert.
Resource Linking: When appropriate, link to your high-quality content as supporting resources for your answers.
Question Monitoring: Set up alerts for questions related to your industry or specific pain points your product addresses.
How to Optimise Your Website for BOTH AI Search & Google
Successfully navigating the 2025 search landscape means optimising for the advanced AI within Google, as well as the new conversational AI platforms.
The good news is that many best practices for traditional SEO are now more important than ever, forming the bedrock for all AI visibility.
1) Focus on High-Quality, Expert Content: The Foundation for All AI
Both Google's sophisticated algorithms and dedicated AI search models heavily prioritise expert-driven, authoritative content. Your content must demonstrate genuine Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) to be considered reliable.
Create:
In-depth, well-structured articles that comprehensively answer key industry questions.
Long-form content optimised for natural language queries and deep understanding by AI.
Whitepapers, research reports, case studies, and other relevant content that explicitly establishes your company's authority and thought leadership.
2) Embrace Conversational & Long-Tail Keywords: Speaking to AI
Since Google's own AI, along with external AI search tools, relies on advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and goes far beyond simple keyword matching, optimising your website for natural language is paramount.
Focus on:
Conversational queries: These types of queries include nuanced questions like, 'How much does it cost to hire a sustainability consultant?' or 'What’s the ROI of using parametric design in commercial buildings?'
Long-tail phrases: Such as 'What are the key challenges in scaling AI-powered robotics for manufacturing?' or 'What are the most effective carbon reduction strategies for data centres?'
Comprehensive FAQ sections: These directly answer common questions in a clear, structured format that AI tools can easily parse and reference, boosting your chances of being featured in direct answers and Google AI Overviews.
3) Build Authoritative Backlinks: The Trust Signal for All Search AI
Both Google's ranking systems and AI search platforms pull from high-authority sites to ensure reliability. Strong backlinks remain a fundamental trust signal for all AI. Work to:
Get featured in reputable industry blogs, major publications, and academic sources, leveraging your social media presence for amplification.
Publish original, data-driven research that journalists, academics, and industry bloggers will naturally cite as a credible source.
Utilise strategic PR initiatives to secure high-quality brand mentions and links on highly regarded sites, signaling authority to search engines.
4) Leverage Structured Data & Schema Markup: The Language AI Understands
Implementing structured data (schema markup) is especially important. It acts as a universal translator, helping both Google's AI and other AI models understand the context and meaning of your content. This enhances your eligibility for rich results in Google and direct answers in AI tools. Implement:
FAQ Schema: To explicitly highlight answers to common questions, making them easily digestible for AI.
Article & Blog Schema: For better indexing and semantic understanding of your written content.
Organisation Schema: To clearly establish your brand's identity, authority, and official information.
Product Schema, How-To Schema, etc.: Use any relevant schema that accurately describes your content, providing structured signals to AI.
5) Maintain Advanced Traditional SEO Best Practices: Continual Optimisation for Google's Core
While new AI search frontiers are emerging, Google remains the dominant search engine, and its core algorithms are continually evolving. Maintaining excellence in traditional SEO best practices is not just about rankings; it's about providing the fundamental signals that Google's AI needs to understand and value your content. Continue to:
Optimise on-page elements: Refine meta titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and alt text for images, ensuring they are not just keyword-rich but also contextually relevant and compelling for users and AI.
Improve page speed and mobile responsiveness: These are vital user experience factors that Google's AI monitors closely. A fast, mobile-friendly site provides a better user experience and signals quality.
Strengthen internal linking: A logical internal linking structure helps both users and Google's AI discover and understand the hierarchy and relationships between pages on your site.
Track keyword performance and adapt: Continuously monitor which keywords and topics are driving traffic, understanding that AI's influence means adapting your strategy to cover related conversational queries and long-tail phrases.
From Content Strategy to Technical Enhancements
While refining your content and keyword strategy is essential for both traditional and AI-powered search, including voice queries, the evolution of SEO doesn't stop there.
The technical foundation of your website plays a key role in how well search engines – and by extension, voice assistants – can crawl, understand, and serve your content to users.
Today, artificial intelligence is also helping to transform the technical side of SEO - enhancing site speed, improving crawlability, content optimisation, and streamlining indexing.
The next section explores how AI-driven tools can integrate with your existing strategies, ensuring that both your content and your website’s infrastructure are primed for an ever-changing search environment.
Leveraging AI for Technical SEO Enhancements
Site Speed and Performance Optimisation
Site speed is critical for search engine rankings and user experience. AI tools can help make your website faster and more efficient, delivering a smooth and engaging experience to visitors via:
Image Optimisation: AI-powered image compression tools can save you valuable time by resizing and shrinking images without sacrificing quality, significantly reducing page load times.
User Behaviour Analysis: Machine learning can study how visitors interact with your site, identifying issues that might slow it down.
By addressing these issues, you can lower bounce rates and improve user experience - leading to better search rankings.
Improved Crawling and Indexing
For your website to rank well, it must be easily crawled and indexed by search engines.
Efficient Crawling & Indexing: AI tools can assist search engines in discovering and indexing your pages effectively.
NLP Capabilities: Advanced natural language processing (NLP) helps these tools understand your site’s content and structure.
Such tools can also help optimise your website’s design, internal linking structure, and XML sitemaps, further boosting discoverability.
Personalised SEO Strategies Using AI Data Analysis
Personalisation is key to delivering exceptional user experiences, and AI is transforming how we approach personalised SEO. Historically, these advanced strategies were mostly accessible only to enterprise-level companies.
However, more accessible tools are beginning to emerge, though (as of July 2025) truly dynamic personalisation remains primarily enterprise-focused, with mid-market solutions offering basic segmentation and targeting capabilities.
Using this kind of data analysis could allow your business to:
Gain Deeper Insights: Analyse vast amounts of data on user behaviour - including browsing history, search queries, location, and device usage - to better understand your audience.
Segment and Target Content: AI can help analyse audience data to create detailed customer segments and inform more targeted content strategies. While fully dynamic content personalisation is primarily available at enterprise level through platforms like Adobe Target and Dynamic Yield, businesses can use AI insights to create more targeted content variations, customise email campaigns, and optimise landing pages for different audience segments. This data-driven approach helps ensure your content resonates more effectively with specific audience groups.
Customise Calls to Action: Use AI-powered tools like HubSpot’s Smart CTAs or Google Optimize to adapt your calls-to-action based on visitor behaviour, traffic source, and identified buyer journey stage. While achieving true personalisation for every individual visitor requires enterprise-level tools, most businesses can effectively segment audiences and deliver more relevant CTAs that better match user intent and increase conversion rates.
By personalising your SEO strategies, you can enhance user experience, increase engagement, and drive higher conversions.
Conclusion: The Future of SEO with AI
Adding AI to your SEO plan can revolutionise how your business approaches search engine optimisation. AI tools can help with everything from keyword research, analysing search trends, and content improvement to technical enhancements. By embracing AI technology, you can stay ahead of rapid changes in digital marketing and boost your brand’s online visibility and success.
A Note on AI-Powered SEO Tools
In your journey to integrate AI into your SEO strategy, you might consider exploring some of the leading tools available. There are many excellent options on the market. We recommend checking out regularly updated resources - such as this comprehensive list of SEO tools - to ensure you’re using the latest and most effective technologies. Or, don't hesitate to reach out to our SEO experts at Beauxhaus to find out how we can boost your SEO and drive warm leads to your B2B business.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can AI tools replace your SEO expert?
While AI tools are transforming the digital marketing landscape, they cannot completely replace SEO professionals. Human expertise is essential for understanding data, interpreting user behaviour, creating engaging, targeted content, and unlocking the full potential of adapting to the fast pace of change.
How does AI influence Google's search algorithm?
Machine learning - a key component of AI - helps Google’s algorithm understand user intent and deliver high-quality, relevant results. This continuous learning process improves search rankings and enhances the overall search experience.
What are the best AI search engine optimisation tools for SEO beginners in the UK?
There are lots of user-friendly SEO tools available for the UK market. For example, many content creators begin with AI writing assistants like Jasper.ai. However, there are many excellent options available. For an up-to-date list, consider visiting resources that regularly review the latest AI SEO tools as noted above.
How does AI improve technical SEO?
AI-powered tools can assist with certain technical SEO tasks - such as automated image compression for site speed, identifying crawl issues through log analysis, and suggesting schema markup implementations - though human expertise remains essential for strategy and implementation.
How can AI assist with keyword research and content creation?
AI-powered tools can help analyse search trends and user intent to uncover valuable keyword opportunities - including long-tail keywords - and can also generate first content drafts or ideas. However, human editing is essential to maintain authenticity, brand voice, and accuracy.
Is AI-powered SEO suitable for small businesses or only large enterprises?
AI-powered SEO tools are often scalable and can benefit businesses of all sizes. Small businesses can also leverage cost-effective AI solutions to enhance their online presence, optimise local SEO, and gain competitive insights without needing extensive technical resources.
How can I measure the impact of AI on my SEO performance?
While directly measuring AI’s impact on SEO remains challenging, businesses can track related metrics like organic traffic changes, user engagement patterns, and conversion rates, alongside newer metrics like AI platform mentions and citation frequency using specialised tools like Profound or BrightEdge.
Would you like help Optimising your Web pages for AI-Powered SEO?
Reach out to our experienced SEO team today.
