How to Optimize Content for AI Search Engines [2026 Guide]

ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of users. Google AI Mode is now available to everyone. 

AI search engines are no longer experimental. They’re becoming the new default for how people find information. If you want to stay visible online, you need to optimize your content for AI discovery.

This step-by-step guide walks you through the exact steps to help your content appear in AI answers and recommendations. And turn visibility into traffic—and, ultimately, new customers.

What Is AI Search and Why Should You Care?

AI search engines that use large language models (LLMs) to generate complete answers using trusted content from the web. Instead of showing a list of links like a traditional search engine, AI search engines deliver a single, synthesized response. 

Platforms like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search, and Perplexity pull data in real time, analyze billions of data points, and respond in a conversational format. 

Here’s why this matters now:

• Semrush’s 2025 AI overviews study found that Google AI Overviews now appear in 88% of informational search intent queries, with growing use in commercial and navigational queries. 
• Organic links are being pushed down, leading to more zero-click searches where users don’t visit websites—meaning AI is stealing traffic from traditional search results
• Citations don’t always come from the top Google results. One study found only 12% of ChatGPT citations matched URLs on Google’s first page. 

Success in traditional SEO doesn’t guarantee visibility in AI search results.

How AI Search Engines Choose What to Cite

Ranking well on Google is no longer enough. AI search engines cite content that’s clear, structured, trustworthy, and topically relevant. Each platform has its own rules, but most follow similar patterns. 

E-E-A-T Still Matters—with Context 

Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity appear to heavily weigh general experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (traits Google refers to as E-E-A-T). 

But large language models (LLMs) evaluate credibility using more specific signals. 

Here’s a sample of what many LLMs look for when selecting citations:

• Credible authorship: Named authors with relevant credentials or experience
• Original content: Firsthand data, insights, or expert commentary
• Clean structure: Semantic HTML, proper headings, and organized page layout
• Freshness: Recently published or updated content—especially in fast-changing industries like AI or finance
• Domain trust: Strong backlink profiles and mentions on respected, topic-relevant sites

Google explicitly states that helpful, high-quality content with clear authorship, strong topical focus, and full crawlability is most likely to appear in AI Overviews.

Inside the AI Overview Algorithm

Google’s AI Overviews favor content that is structured, current, contextually rich, and mentioned often.

Here's what improves your citation odds:

• Structured data: Using schema markup like FAQPage, HowTo, Article, and WebPage may make your content easier for AI systems to parse and cite accurately. Some SEOs debate its importance, but it supports clarity, which is always a good thing. 
• Fresh content: In competitive spaces, recency is often a tiebreaker. Tools like Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker can help you identify and update outdated pages. 
• Top-ranking content is cited more often: Google’s AI Overviews tend to pull from the highest-ranking sources. This aligns with the idea of “Benford’s Law of Prominence,” as described by Xponent21—top-ranked pages are disproportionately favored for citation in AI summaries. Focus on achieving a high organic ranking to boost your chances of being referenced.
• Keyword co-occurrence: LLMs often rely on co-occurrence patterns—terms that frequently appear together in training data. When your brand consistently appears near relevant topical keywords, it helps models associate your content with that domain and can increase your chances of being referenced or cited in AI-generated answers. 

For example, in articles about “project management tools,” Monday.com often appears near “best for workflow automation.” That repeated pairing signals to AI that Monday.com is relevant to that category. 

This builds semantic relevance, which LLMs rely on when generating answers and selecting sources. 

These technical signals shape your visibility in AI results, but they’re only part of the equation. 

What’s Changed in AI SEO Since 2023

AI is evolving fast. Strategies that worked even a few months ago may no longer be effective.

At Semrush, we continuously monitor how AI search engines behave. We’ve analyzed how citation patterns, model capabilities, and content structures have shifted over the past two years. 

Key AI SEO changes since 2023 include:

• Google AI Overviews now cite top 10 sources 85.79% of the time
• Multimodal AI models (Gemini, Claude 3, GPT-4o) can now process visuals and voice
• Featured snippets have become gateway content for AI inclusion

These changes shape how content gets discovered in AI search. Based on this, we’ve created a checklist to help you optimize for visibility in AI-powered results. 

AI Search Engine Optimization Checklist

Use these up-to-date tactics to improve your visibility in AI-generated results: 

Let’s break it down, step by step.

7 Steps to Optimize Content for AI Search Engines

AI search engines don’t necessarily surface the most insightful or well-written content. They surface what’s easiest to parse, structure, and trust. 

That means even great content can be overlooked if it’s not LLM-friendly.

Follow these seven steps to improve your chances of being cited by AI platforms: 

1. Target the Right Questions 

Start by identifying question-based keywords, which are most likely to trigger AI Overviews, featured snippets, and LLM-generated answers. 

Look for phrases like: 

• “How to…”
• “What is…”
• “Best way to…”

Use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find high-intent, question-driven keywords with AI citation potential.

First, enter a broad keyword related to your topic or industry, add your domain for tailored results, and click “Search.”

To find keywords with AI-friendly formats, click the Questions tab in the top left, open the Advanced filters drop-down, and check “Featured snippet” and “People also ask.”

Keywords that trigger these features are strong candidates for inclusion in AI-generated summaries. 

This process helps you prioritize topics that align with how AI tools choose what to surface. And ensures your content starts with the right foundation. 

2. Optimize for Featured Snippets

Featured snippets often serve as source material for AI-generated answers.

Google’s AI Overviews regularly cite content that’s already optimized for snippets, especially definitions, lists, and how-to steps.

A study by Conversion Digital found that concise answers and well-structured lists strongly correlate with inclusion in AI Overviews. 

If your content ranks in a snippet, it has a higher chance of being cited by AI. 

Here’s how:

• Use exact-match questions in H2s or H3s
• Answer questions directly within 40–60 words
• Use numbered or bulleted lists for rankings, steps, or tool roundups 
• Place definitions, stats, or processes near the top of each section

Let’s say you’re writing an article about content pruning. 

You could format the section like this:

This format gives a direct answer, includes a supporting statistic, and aligns with how LLMs and Google AI Overviews select content. 

3. Format Your Content for AI Extraction

LLMs don’t read like humans. They extract clear, structured, and skimmable chunks of content. 

To be cited in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or Perplexity, your content must be: 

• Modular 
• Predictable
• Easy to parse 

For example, in our guide to local SEO, each section starts with a question-based H2, followed by a 1-2 sentence summary. 

This formatting makes it easy for LLMs to extract and cite relevant sections. And it’s one reason Semrush often appears in AI-generated answers.

These strategies overlap heavily with on-page SEO best practices, with a few slight differences.

Here’s how to format your content for better AI visibility:

• Use short paragraphs (2-3 lines max) to reduce cognitive load
• Break down information with bullet points and numbered lists
• Lead each section with 1-2 sentences that answer the heading directly 
• Place key takeaways under H2s and H3s to help LLMs link questions with answers 
• Use a consistent answer pattern for questions (e.g., definition → detail → example)
• Apply semantic HTML (“<h2>”, “<ul>”, “<strong>”, etc.) to help crawlers and LLMs understand hierarchy and emphasis 
• Add relevant schema markup, such as FAQPage, HowTo, or Article to define the page’s purpose for AI 
• Avoid client-side JavaScript rendering because most LLMs cannot render dynamic content 

You can use Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker to uncover issues with readability, structure, and content layout that affect your chances of being cited by AI tools.

Click “+ Create project.”

Enter the URL you want to audit and, optionally, name your project. Then, click “Create project.”

Set up the tool and run an audit. Once complete, you’ll see an overview showing suggestions for the top pages to optimize on your site. Click “Optimization Ideas” to get specific ideas.

Pair this with the SEO Writing Assistant to fine-tune tone, sentence length, and clarity—all key elements for AI readability.

Just open the tool, write or paste your content, add target keywords, and click “Generate recommendations.” The tool will surface suggestions to make your writing clearer, tighter, and more aligned with how LLMs scan for information.

4. Add Supporting Media

AI tools increasingly rely on multimodal signals—including images, diagrams, and video—to understand and rank content. 

Adding relevant visuals every 500-700 words improves user experience and boosts your visibility in AI-generated answers.

Best practices for supporting media :

• Use annotated screenshots to illustrate tools, dashboards, or processes 
• Add custom diagrams or simple GIFs to break down workflows 
• Insert charts or infographics when presenting data to help AI recognize patterns and context 
• Embed short video clips to show how tools or features work in real time
• Always use descriptive filenames and keyword‑rich alt text to help AI understand and categorize visual content

For example, on the Semrush blog, we often pair technical topics with custom visuals. In our study on zero-click searches, a clean diagram made the core finding easy to grasp—and more likely to be reused by AI tools:

5. Make Your Brand ‘Citable’

AI systems prefer content from trusted, clearly attributed sources.

According to Semrush’s 2025 AI Overviews study Google’s AI Overviews reward expert-led, well-sourced content. Authority and transparency drive inclusion in AI-generated search results.

Here’s how to make your content more citable:

• Add author bios with credentials or relevant experience
• Include original visuals like screenshots, diagrams, or frameworks 
• Include proprietary data or expert quotes to build authority
• Share real-world examples or case studies (e.g., how to use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit)
• Use consistent branding, bylines, and schema across your site

We apply these same strategies in every Semrush blog post: 

• We cite original data
• We include annotated screenshots
• We use real case studies and expert commentary
• We list author bios on every article 

We also include an “Expert Reviewed” badge to highlight our editorial process and signal trust to AI models. 

These elements send strong E-E-A-T signals to both Google and LLMs. That’s likely to make your content easier to trust, cite, and surface in AI results. 

6. Build High E-E-A-T Backlinks & Mentions

AI search engines evaluate your content and your reputation. 

Mentions and backlinks from high-authority, topic-relevant sites help AI systems trust your brand and understand your topical expertise, increasing your chances of being cited in AI-generated answers.

Here’s how to get mentioned across the web:

• Post on platforms like Reddit, Quora, Product Hunt, and topic-specific forums
• Pitch insights to newsletters, blogs, and podcasts in your niche
• Write guest posts or case studies for credible websites in your industry
• Use digital PR to earn backlinks from news outlets, roundups, or research sites

The goal isn’t just volume. It’s topical relevance and perceived authority.

A single mention from a topically relevant, high-authority site can be more valuable than dozens of generic or low-quality links.

Case in point: 

Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, shared that a single backlink from TechCrunch led to a measurable boost in organic traffic:

“Because that link comes from an authority site, Google puts lots of weight on it. In fact, I noticed a boost in my organic search engine traffic right after TechCrunch linked to me.”

Why? 

Authority links send strong trust signals to both users and search engines—and now, to AI systems as well. They help establish topical relevance and improve your chances of being cited in AI-generated answers.

To stay on top of high-authority mentions and uncover new backlink opportunities, use Semrush’s Brand Monitoring tool to track press coverage, citations, and backlinks in real time.

7. Optimize Your Robots.txt and LLMs.txt Files

If AI bots can’t access your content, they can’t cite it. AI search engines and LLMs may rely on your robots.txt and LLMs.txt files to understand which parts of your site they’re allowed to crawl and index.

If your best content is unintentionally blocked or your low-value pages are left open, you could be hurting your chances of AI visibility.

Here’s how to take control:

• Ensure your site has both a robots.txt and LLMs.txt file and that you’re not blocking key pages
• Disallow low-value or irrelevant pages (e.g., thank-you pages, tag archives, test pages)
• Audit your crawl directives regularly to make sure your best content is accessible

While LLMs.txt is still experimental, platforms like Perplexity and Common Crawl have started honoring it, so early adoption could give you more control over how your content is used in AI outputs.

Read our full guide to robots.txt to better understand how to use this tool.

Frequently Asked Questions About AI Search Optimization

Here are a few common questions about AI SEO:

How Do I Optimize Content for AI Search Engines?

Structure your content around clear, question-based headers (H2s and H3s), use short and concise answers (40–60 words), and format with semantic HTML. 

Include expert quotes, structured data, and original visuals. Tools like On-Page SEO Checker can help you find and fix issues that may block AI visibility.

Do Featured Snippets Help with AI Search?

Yes, content structured for featured snippets is more likely to be cited in AI-generated answers.

Using concise definitions, clear headers, and step-by-step lists makes your content easier for AI tools like Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity to extract and summarize. 

While winning a featured snippet doesn’t guarantee AI citation, it often signals that your content is well-optimized for LLM visibility.

How Do I Know If AI Is Citing My Content?

Use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to track citations, mentions, and brand visibility across AI platforms. You can also set up alerts with Brand Monitoring to catch references in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and beyond.

Why Isn’t My Content Showing Up in AI Answers?

Common reasons include a lack of structured formatting, missing author bylines, outdated content, long paragraphs without summaries, or blocked pages in your robots.txt or LLMs.txt file. 

Running an audit with On-Page SEO Checker is a quick way to diagnose and fix these issues.

Improve Your AI Search Engine Visibility Today

AI search is already reshaping how people discover and trust content online.

If your content isn’t optimized for LLMs, your visibility will decline as AI search engines continue to shape how people discover information.

The good news? You don’t need to guess what’s working.

With Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit, you can:

• Audit your content for AI-readiness
• Review your AI brand visibility
• Beat your competition in LLMs

Don’t wait for traffic to drop. Start optimizing for AI visibility today with AI Visibility Toolkit.