Do we need a separate Ai SEO strategy, or is good SEO still the foundation? Here’s what changes and where to focus first.
Do we need a separate Ai SEO strategy if we already do SEO? The honest answer is: probably not as a separate thing. Most of what helps a business appear in Ai-generated answers is still recognisably SEO.
Ai search is more likely to ask whether a page can be used as evidence inside a broader answer. That means our content needs to be easier to interpret and trust. A vague service page is not much use to a search engine. A page that explains who the service is for, what options exist and what a sensible next step looks like is far more useful. This is part of modern SEO.
But where we are looking at Ai specifically, which Ai engine should we optimise for first? It is the one our customers actually use. That sounds obvious, but it is often skipped. We like to concentrate on the platforms being talked about most loudly. But we shouldn’t guess – we should find out.
Sales teams may be able to ask, or the old website form “how did you find us?” question could be updated. We could survey customers. Search Console can show what queries bring traffic, and we can test these in different Ai search engines. Server logs and analytics may reveal visits from Ai-related referrers. And Bing Webmaster Tools is already starting to report Ai citations.
Once we know where customers are looking, we can prioritise. For Google, that may mean strengthening pages that already earn impressions. For ChatGPT or Perplexity, it may mean creating clearer comparison content and better answers to buying-stage questions. For Copilot, it may mean making sure the site is technically accessible and well understood by Bing.
I like the description that good SEO still gives us the foundations. Ai simply asks whether those foundations are strong enough to be reused when the answer is assembled somewhere else.