At space150, we put brands at the intersection of culture and emerging technology to drive demand through content, experiences, product, and promotion. As AI transforms how audiences discover and engage with content, we’re evolving our strategies to help keep brands visible.

This guide offers six foundational steps to help brands audit, adapt, and amplify their content in a world increasingly shaped by AI engines like Google SGE and ChatGPT.

This is where we are today. Tomorrow will be different.

Step 1: Gather benchmarks Compile monthly data going back at least a year. This will help you diagnose the shift over time.

• Brand search impressions (Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools) will show your brand demand in search engines over time and also help diagnose user behavior shift from search engines to other channels, like ChatGPT
• Brand organic search traffic (web analytics) traffic vs. impression to detect zero-click impact from search engines
• Non-brand search impressions and traffic (Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools) to spot shifts in discoverability due to AI-driven SERP changes
• Featured snippet performance (SEMRush or AHrefs) - as these often drive zero-click responses
• LLM referral traffic (web analytics) - see what traffic your site is getting from Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Perplexity

Step 2: Entertain new metrics and KPIs As AI engines prioritize answers over links, your visibility may increasingly be measured by mentions, summaries, or quote-inclusion in AI-generated responses—even if they don’t result in direct traffic.

If organic search traffic is important to your business and you are observing a drop, here are a few considerations while you weigh an investment in measurement in understanding how your brand is appearing in AI sourced answers.

• This is a developing space - with more noise and less standardization. Treat these new KPIs and tools as you would with any experiment
• There is a gap in reporting in traditional tools - Google Search Console and Google Ads aren’t a good source of information here
• There are lots of AI monitoring tools out there - such as SEMRush and Kaifootprint, consider evaluating and testing, with a planned re-evaluation period as the space will evolve quickly

Example:

Step 3: Expand your website content types While longform content has typically been optimized to be concise and generated for a common site visitor, this is the time to test and consider expanding written content in a variety of formats such as:

• Long-form, in-depth articles - with cited and annotated data for authority
• Structured content for skimming - ordered lists or summaries including subheads and bullet points, which will aid in AI parsing
• Conversational content - written in a conversational tone, including Q&A and follow up questions
• Ensure LLMs can consume your content! (If appropriate) - See step 6

Step 4: Bring content to life with your unique brand voice

• Offer something truly useful, including proprietary data or unique context. This could include a branded internal methodology or processes
• Highlight how your offerings solve problems or deliver value in ways competitors don’t, supporting your claims with case studies or customer stories
• Don’t be afraid to segment - AI results will be increasingly customized to the person querying, don’t be afraid to personalize content and/or mention all your potential audience types
• Reinforce your brand POV - what can only you say?
• Use your tools - Leveraging toolkits can significantly expedite the process of optimizing content for AI. For WordPress sites, consider WP Engine's new Smart Search, which integrates AI and vector database capabilities, as a helpful solution offered by our partner.

Step 5: Engage Social + PR

• Move beyond the major walled gardens like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, to include indexable, conversational platforms like Reddit, Quora, public Facebook Groups and Linkedin and X, engage in conversations and start your own
• Augment on-site and social content with existing PR and SEO strategies (complete with backlinks) with special focus on content that is ideal for AI like summaries, listicles, FAQ summaries

Example:

Step 6: Make sure LLMs can index your site! Unless you have a really good reason, like if your content is for sale or you don’t want it in competitors’ hands Source: OpenAI’s GBTBot documentation

This is part of a series. See part 1 here, and stay tuned for deeper insights on more areas of how to thrive in the new age of content discovery.

Want help auditing your content’s AI readiness? We’d love to hear from you!