I went online the other day and made the mistake of reading SEO commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know. My fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within about 10 minutes, I had run into 20 articles about \u201chow to get your content cited by AI\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, this is the new big thing. The new promised land. The new retainer-shaped life raft for an industry that can feel the water rising around its ankles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is mostly bollocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not because AI search does not matter. It does. Not because large language models are not changing the way people discover brands. They are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s bollocks because the SEO industry has taken a serious commercial shift and reduced it to the same old nonsense it always sells when it panics: more content, more dashboards, more ambiguity, more jargon, more pretending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I kid you not, one of the leading “It’s just SEO” voices in the industry is now selling GEO Audits. Literally, it’s on their website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are out there calling anyone who utters the letter G before E and O a grifter, while equally selling SEO as GEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that’s not what this article is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This article equips you with the practical knowledge to transition from being an SEO to becoming a search marketer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One just ‘optimises stuff’, the other drives real revenue and growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One is talking about getting your content cited by AI, the other is talking in ways that get CMO’s listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this article will help you to make the transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SEO industry has always had a problem with strategic ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strategic ambiguity is the deliberate use of vague language so everyone can hear what they want to hear. You say something just loose enough that nobody can object to it, but broad enough that everyone can project their own meaning onto it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s incredibly useful when you want to persuade a crowd with different anxieties. Politicians use it daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that is exactly what SEO influencers are doing right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They get on stage. They go on podcasts. They write long ranty LinkedIn posts. They say things like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just SEO.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFocus on helpful content.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBuild topical authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCreate strong entity signals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOptimise for AI visibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone nods. Everyone feels better. Everyone goes back to the office with a phrase they can put into a deck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what has actually been said?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Very little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the point. The ambiguity is the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The industry does not want clarity right now because clarity would force a much more uncomfortable conversation. It would force SEOs to admit that what they have sold for years, traffic from informational content, is becoming less reliable, less defensible, and, in many cases, commercially useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So instead, we get bedtime stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do not worry. It is still SEO. Do not worry. GEO is just SEO. Do not worry. You just need better content. Do not worry. Track your citations. Do not worry. Buy the audit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is strategic ambiguity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t believe me, go and find the content of your favourite SEO influencer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You’ll see stuff like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We analysed 5 trillion citations”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“AI SEO is a content problem”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Your GEO strategy might be…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Are Google Rankings Altering AI Citations?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“How to Scale Content”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Why You Shouldn’t Scale content”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All those titles are slightly adapted versions of content already out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s all vague, and none of it actually provides any marketing value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s just SEOs who have gained a degree of fame on the conference or career circuit, suddenly being asked difficult questions about marketing, growth, and revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The response… vague waffle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can do better than this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s be honest about what a lot of SEO has actually been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, plenty of agencies and consultants sold a fairly simple model. Write blog content against keywords. Build or acquire links. Increase rankings. Get traffic. Report the traffic. Declare victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes it worked. Often, it sort of worked. Sometimes it worked in a way that was impossible to isolate from everything else the business was doing. And sometimes it was a complete waste of money, wrapped in a graph that went up and to the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at least the mechanism was vaguely understandable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person searched for something. Your article ranked. They clicked. They landed on your website. They saw your brand. Maybe they read something useful. Maybe they remembered you. Maybe they converted later. Maybe they did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was at least a route from search activity to brand exposure. A weak route at times. An inefficient one in many cases. But a route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why SEO could be sold as both performance and advertising, depending on how convenient the argument needed to be that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the lead numbers looked good, it was revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the lead numbers did not look good, it was awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the traffic was irrelevant, it was \u201ctop-of-funnel\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the content did not convert, it was \u201cbuilding authority\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Strategic ambiguity again. Lovely stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now that model is under pressure. AI answers, zero-click search, Reddit threads, YouTube results, Google\u2019s own features, marketplaces, social search and LLMs are all changing the way people discover information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And instead of confronting that properly, the SEO industry has reached for the nearest available substitute metric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI visibility exists because agencies needed a replacement for traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the uncomfortable truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For years, traffic was the big number. It sat at the top of the report. It justified the retainer. It made the client feel that something was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, traffic is harder to promise. Informational search is being eaten. Clicks are being compressed. Search results are becoming answers, interfaces, conversations and summaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the industry needed a new number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enter citations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, the new goal is to get your content cited by AI systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now go and explain that to a CFO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not to another SEO. Not to a conference room full of people who already want to believe it. Not to a Slack group full of your mates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An experienced CFO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Explain exactly how increasing your citation rate in AI-generated responses leads to revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not vibes. Not \u201cvisibility\u201d. Not \u201cbrand presence\u201d. Not \u201cthe future of search\u201d. Revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because that is where this whole thing starts to fall apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You usually cannot see the prompts. You cannot reliably see all the responses. You cannot know how representative your sample is. You cannot know whether the citation was seen, trusted, remembered or acted on. And even when you are cited, the user often does not click.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what exactly are you selling?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are selling awareness, say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are selling advertising exposure, say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are selling demand creation, say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But do not dress up a shaky citation dashboard as a commercial strategy and expect serious marketers and the CFO to applaud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is how industries make themselves uninvestable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yes, that’s what’s happening right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real question is not, \u201cHow do we get cited?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The real question is, \u201cHow do we increase the probability that our brand is recommended, remembered, searched for and chosen?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is a very different question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it is where many SEOs start to feel lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because answering that question requires marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actual marketing. Not title-tag marketing. Not \u201cfive blog posts a month\u201d marketing. Not \u201cwe built a glossary and therefore changed the banking sector\u201d marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You need to understand how customers make decisions. You need to understand demand. You need to understand mental availability. You need to understand category entry points. You need to understand positioning. You need to understand distinctive brand assets. You need to understand distribution. You need to understand fame. You need to understand how a market comes to know, trust and prefer one brand over another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is search marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SEO, in its narrowest and most common form, became obsessed with extracting traffic from Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Search marketing is bigger. It asks where demand is created, where it is expressed, where it is captured and how it becomes revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That includes Google. But it also includes ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, marketplaces, review sites, comparison sites, communities, paid search, branded search, PR, partnerships and all the other places customers go when they are confused, curious or ready to buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The customer does not care what channel you have put in your agency org chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They just search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the mirror moment for SEOs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You need to stand there and ask yourself a simple question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What business have I actually been in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Were you in the revenue business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or were you in the business of advertising brands through blog content?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is nothing wrong with the second one, by the way. Content can absolutely be advertising. It can create awareness. It can educate a market. It can build memory. It can help buyers make decisions. It can create familiarity before a sales conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if that is what you were doing, say that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if search traffic is no longer a reliable distribution mechanism for that content, you need a new distribution model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means you do not just create content and wait for Google to bless it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You create content and market it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You put it in front of the audiences that matter. You use paid social. You use LinkedIn. You use email. You use partnerships. You use communities. You use sales teams. You use PR. You use events. You use outreach. You use whatever channel actually reaches the people you claim to care about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is content marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clue is in the second word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same applies to links and mentions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Links still matter. Brand mentions matter. Co-occurrences matter. Being talked about online matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But buying links from dead blogs that exist purely to sell links is not marketing. That’s littering with invoices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A meaningful mention is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your business runs a training session for local B2B owners through the Chamber of Commerce, and the Chamber writes about it, emails its members, lists you on its website and shares the event online, that is not just a link.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is market presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your founder is interviewed by an industry publication that your buyers actually read, that is not just a mention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is salience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If customers review you, partners recommend you, analysts include you, creators talk about you, and communities discuss you, those links and mentions become evidence of something much bigger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are proxies for fame, trust and market activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early days, you may need to kickstart that system. You need to do things worth talking about. Create useful research. Run events. Build tools. Publish strong opinions. Partner with credible organisations. Help a specific audience solve a specific problem. Show up in places that matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is PR. That is comms. That is content marketing. That is brand building. That is search marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is not \u201clink building\u201d in the grubby old sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is earning evidence that the market knows you exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If SEOs want a serious metric for the next era, they should spend less time obsessing over AI citations and more time thinking about share of search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Share of search is simple. How much is your brand being searched for compared to the other brands in your category?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is not perfect. No metric is. But it is commercially interesting because it gets closer to demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If more people are searching for your brand, something is happening in the market. Your advertising might be working. Your PR might be landing. Your product might be spreading. Your AI recommendations might be influencing behaviour. Your content might be creating memories. Your sales activity might be creating curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brand search is not the whole story, but it is a serious signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And unlike \u201cwe were cited in an AI answer for a synthetic prompt we invented ourselves\u201d, it is a signal a CMO can understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is where search becomes more valuable, not less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Search data can tell you what people remember. What they compare. What problems they associate with your category. Which brands they consider. Which questions block purchase. Which competitors are gaining mental ground. Which campaigns create demand. Which messages make people investigate further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But only if you stop treating search as a traffic vending machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Traffic still matters. Of course it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the role of traffic changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You should not be selling traffic as the core product anymore. You should be using traffic as a diagnostic signal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where are people coming from? Are they coming from branded search? Are they coming from non-brand commercial search? Are they coming from LLMs? Are they coming from LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, email, paid social, partners or PR? Are buyer-intent pages growing? Are high-intent visitors converting? Are more people returning after initial exposure elsewhere? Are sales conversations improving because buyers arrive more educated?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is useful analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is search marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The old model was: \u201cWe target keywords to get traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new model is: \u201cWe create market activity, then use search behaviour to understand demand, memory, consideration and revenue impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is a much bigger, better and more defensible role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is also harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which is why so many people do not want to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the bit that will upset people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This new model does not fit neatly into the classic SEO retainer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does not fit into \u201cfive blog posts a month\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does not fit into \u201cwe build 10 links\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does not fit into \u201cwe optimise existing content\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does not fit into a templated AI visibility audit sold by someone who was telling you six months ago that GEO did not exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The model needs to break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because the market has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your service only survives when the client misunderstands what is happening, you do not have a strategy. You have a hostage situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The future is not SEO as usual, with \u201cAI\u201d stuck on the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The future belongs to people who can connect search to business outcomes with adult clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means being able to sit in front of a CMO and explain how search supports the marketing strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It means being able to sit in front of a CFO and explain how your activity contributes to revenue, margin, acquisition efficiency, conversion quality, demand creation or demand capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It means dropping the comforting language that only other SEOs understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because \u201ctopical authority\u201d does not get you very far in the boardroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither does \u201cwe need to increase citation frequency\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At some point, someone serious will ask: \u201cSo what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you need a better answer than a screenshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SEO influencers are not going to save you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of them became popular by saying popular things. That is how the game works. They tell the industry what it wants to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, the industry wants to hear that everything is fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wants to hear that AI search is just SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wants to hear that nothing fundamental has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wants to hear that the old playbook still works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wants to head to the Winchester and wait for this all to blow over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is not blowing over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people who survive this shift will not be the ones with the loudest conference talks or the most ambiguous LinkedIn posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will be the ones who learn marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They will understand customers. They will understand categories. They will understand demand. They will understand how brands are remembered. They will understand how content spreads. They will understand how PR creates search demand. They will understand how distinctive assets make a brand easier to recall. They will understand how mental availability and physical availability affect growth. They will understand that search is not just a channel. It is a behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And they will understand the most important point of all:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal is not to rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal is not to get traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal is not to get cited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The goal is to be found, remembered, trusted and chosen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So stop hiding behind AI visibility bollocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stop pretending citations are a strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stop repeating whatever the SEO influencer class has decided is safe to say this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Put the grown-up pants on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Become a search marketer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrew Holland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went online the other day and made the mistake of reading SEO commentary. I know. My fault. Within about 10 minutes, I had run into 20 articles about \u201chow to get your content cited by AI\u201d. Apparently, this is the new big thing. The new promised land. The new retainer-shaped life raft for an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":"","tve_custom_css":"","tve_user_custom_css":"","tve_globals":{},"tcb2_ready":0,"tcb_editor_enabled":0,"tve_landing_page":"","_tve_header":"","_tve_footer":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-search","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growththroughcontent.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}