(BPT) - Is the customer click-through dead? Thanks to AI and modern online search, the answer is often yes.
New tools and features like Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity are now how people discover and trust content. Online information is crawled and then summarized into bite-sized answers that make it easy for people to get the information they need. There is no additional searching or clicking through to a website.
This change means a new goal for brands: Get into AI summaries and overviews as much as possible.
To better understand the current landscape, the communications experts at branded content company Brandpoint answer top AI search questions.
Where does AI get answers?
AI enhanced search and AI Overviews often contain links and website citations. These are what the AI crawlers have deemed credible and pulled from to write the answer for the search query. This is where brands and their key messages want to appear.
The challenge is that there is currently no one strategy that guarantees you will show up in AI Overviews. But there are steps you can take to position your brand for success and make your content more appealing, like structuring copy in a way that is easily readable by AI.
How do you write content for AI search?
Since AI crawls content online to create answers, you need to revamp how you write and publish communications like press releases, blog posts, sponsored content articles and social media posts.
Structured formats like Q&As, listicles and bylines with credible sources have potential to get cited by AI engines more reliably. Short, clear and well-formatted content is more likely to be surfaced and cited, especially when placed on multiple high-quality media sites. Whatever the topic, strive to create content that answers questions people ask online or solves a customer problem.
How do you balance AI readability with human readability?
Many of the strategies for helping AI to read your content are the same strategies you'd use to make digital content more readable for your target audiences. Both people and AI better process online content that is well organized, with succinct paragraphs including subheads and bullets where it makes sense.
Additionally, both people and AI are seeking answers to questions, so keep intent in mind and include valuable, high-quality information. Rather than separate strategies, AI and human readability are complementary in content creation.
How do you guarantee media placements that AI can scan for answers?
Branded content is one way to control your message and get it published on high-quality websites. Branded content refers to paid placements that are distributed on media sites, such as a sponsored article on a newspaper website.
USA Today is just one example of the high-quality publishers on Brandpoint's network. Many publishers now have partnerships and licensing agreements with AI companies, such as Perplexity AI with Gannett, which owns USA Today and more than 200 local publications.
How often should brands publish content to appeal to AI?
There is no specific frequency for how often brands should publish content for AI search visibility. The key consideration is to create high-quality content, have consistent messaging and publish regularly using different PESO methods - paid, earned, social and owned.
For bigger brands with larger budgets and teams, this could mean multiple times a week. For small brands, this could mean once every two weeks or even monthly. Publishing frequently and consistently is better, as long as it doesn't sacrifice quality.
What technical data is needed for content to get found by AI?
It's important to consider technical best practices to help AI discover content. Structured data, also called schema markup, helps define digital content so AI can read and understand it quickly and accurately. Schema markup is standardized technical code added to a website.
Where can you learn more about AI search?
To learn more about AI search and how you can craft and publish content that appeals to AI, watch the recent webinar, "Branded Content in the Era of AI & GEO: Myths, Truths & Trends."
To learn more about how branded content can support your goals, visit Brandpoint.com.
