This is how to get shown in LLMs in 2026 – how to find prompts people use, and show up for those prompts so you get mentions, visits, and conversions.
AI SEO has several acronyms. The most commonly used are GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization). While there are minor differences in definition, the practical execution (shown below) is the same.
Jump Ahead
Understand how LLMs get a lot of their info
When you ask ChatGPT a question where the user would want up-to-date information, this often triggers a search.
Rule of thumb:
- If the question depends on “what’s true right now”, a search is likely triggered.
- If it’s about “how things work” or “what something means”, it usually isn’t.
ChatGPT and other LLMs use several search engines, but mostly Google – and you can actually see what is being searched.
Here’s a 45-second video I made showing how to see exactly what ChatGPT searches with:
Instructions:
- Go to ChatGPT, put in your prompt.
- Right click, hit Inspect.
- Go to Network.
- In the URL, copy what comes after /c/.
- Paste it in the Filter.
- Now refresh the page.
- Click the orange brackets with the string you just put in.
- Go to Response.
- Search the code for the word “queries”.
- Now you can see what ChatGPT searched the web with.
You’ll typically see 1-3 searches that ChatGPT used. If you’ve ever heard the term, “query fan-out” this is what that is – the 1-3 queries an LLM searches with.
Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity actually shows its searches openly – without all the above steps:
Take these searches…
Take these searches and create dedicated pages for them (use the searches in your Page Title, Meta Desc, URL Slug, H1, and beginning of your first sentence), give them H2 sections in semantically similar pages, and use them in social media posts.
Interlink to these pages and get other sites to link to them.
This is how you get your brand cited and recommended in LLMs.
By the way – if you ever have a reputation attack like what happened in this Reddit post, where AI keeps giving users bad false reviews, you can use the above method to fight it. See exactly what the AI is searching, target these searches with media of all types, and give positive true reviews in the content.
See how much referral traffic you’re getting from AI
Here’s how to see how much traffic you’re getting from AI using Google Analytics.
Video showing how to do this:
Instructions:
- Go to Google Analytics.
- Go to Explore.
- Start new Exploration.
- Set your Dimensions to session source / medium, page path + query string.
- Metrics: views, entrances.
- Rows: session source / medium, page path + query string.
- Show 250 rows.
- Nested rows: yes.
- Values: entrances, views.
- Filters: Session source / medium, matches regex:
.*chatgpt.*|.*openai.*|.*neeva.*|.*writesonic.*|.*nimble.*|.*outrider.*|.*perplexity.*|.*edgeservices.*|.*gemini.*google.*|.*copilot.*|.*claude.*|.*mistral.*|.*meta.*|.*jasper.*|.*deepmind.*|.*copy.*ai.*
Now you can see the pages that are getting surfaced the most in AI to look for patterns in what’s working and what’s not working.
Use Google Search Console to see how Google’s AI might be recommending your site
These instructions will show you how to filter for Google Searches with 7+ words – very common for AI-assisted searches.
Instructions:
- Go to Google Search Console.
- Go to Performance.
- Go to Add Filter, then Query.
- For the filter, choose Custom (regex).
- Paste this in: (\b\w+\b\s){7,}
- Hit Apply.
- Toggle on Average Position
- Scroll down to Queries.
Video showing how to do this:
Now you’ll see Google Searches people have written in natural language, how many clicks you’ve gotten from these searches, and what your ranking is on Google for these AI-assisted searches.
What to do with these AI-assisted searches
Use this language throughout your content, create targeted pages for especially high-value searches, give the searches H2 sections in your content, and use the questions in your FAQs.
Interlink to this content and get other sites to link to it.
This gets your brand cited and recommended in Google’s AI Overviews and Google’s AI Mode.
Using cheap press releases to have LLMs recommend you
Branded prompts and non-competitive prompts on Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity can be influenced by cheap press releases.
Way it works:
- Write your press release. The press release says how you are a great brand for xyz, you’re top rated, 5/5 stars, etc.
- Distribute it through AB Newswire – you can do this with the $80/release pricing or $500 for 83 releases pricing (amortized to $6/release). Or you can try to get somebody on Fiverr with one of these $500 packages, so you pay less than $80, though more than $6.
- These press releases rank on Google Search.
- LLMs cite these press releases.
- People considering the brand will search it on Google or LLMs. The AI Overview and LLMs say how you are a great brand for xyz, you’re top rated, 5/5 stars, etc. Credibility is signaled. Sales cycles are shortened.
- Similarly, AI parrots what you want for other non-competitive prompts or even branded prompts for competitors (where people are asking LLMs about competitors).
Full video on this here:
Using self-promotional “best-of” listicles and positive company updates to get recommended by LLMs
“Best project management software and tools” article on the Asana website – a ranked list of the 11 best pieces of software where Asana ranks themselves number one.
“Kilo Named 2025 ‘Best Ease of Use’ in Gym Management Software” positive company announcement blog post – on the Kilo website.
These are examples of the types of self-promotional “best-of” listicles and positive company updates that are influencing LLMs.
You can put out as many positive company updates as you like.
The self-promotional “best-of” listicles should be used sparingly.
For more, Glen Allsopp of Ahrefs did a great breakdown here: https://ahrefs.com/blog/best-lists-research/
And I turned this breakdown into a video, here:
The best way to do AI SEO
As this has shown, AI SEO/GEO/AEO is very directly tied to SEO.
LLMs get their information from search engines.
So it’s critical to know how to show up at the top of search engines.
It’s also worth mentioning not all content is created equal.
An LLM can recommend you for a prompt that brings you:
- No traffic
- Traffic but no conversions
- Conversions
Same goes for Google Search. You show for a search where you get no clicks, clicks but no conversions, or clicks and conversions.
Pretty obvious which one you’d want.
This is why I made my SEO course, Compact Keywords.
It’s 13.5 hours of:
- How to find search terms that bring customers/users/warm leads calling you up
- How to structure your pages for SEO conversions
- How to structure your site to house these pages
- How to get backlinks
- How to use user-generated content for SEO
- How to make sure your site can be understood by Google and LLMs in the first place
It’s gotten MANY amazing testimonials, but this is one of my favorite recent ones:
“Give it to a junior employee, have them follow it exactly as Edward’s laid out, and you’re going to gain a six-figure SEO-level employee just by having them go through this course.”
Testimonial from Jon Ray – https://edwardsturm.com/compact-keywords/#jon-ray
Lots of customers are saying Compact Keywords is the best way to get meaningful conversions (customers, users, leads) from Google and LLMs.
So if you want to save years learning how to do SEO/GEO/AEO/AI SEO that brings results, I hope you’ll check out the course at https://edwardsturm.com/compact-keywords/
