Mordy Oberstein breaks down what LLMs mean for your SEO and content strategy, explaining why identity, trust, and consistency matter. Mordy Oberstein For this week’s Ask An SEO, the question asked was: “Do I need to rethink my content strategy for LLMs and how do I get started with that?” To answer, I’m going to explain the non-linear journey down the customer journey funnel and where large language models (LLMs) show up. From rethinking traffic expectations to conducting an audit on sentiment picked up by LLMs, I will talk about why brand identity matters in building the kind of reputation that both users and machines recognize as authoritative. You can watch this week’s Ask An SEO video and read the full transcript below. https://youtube.com/watch?v=8VPyf48l22A%3Fsi%3D3eKNpar5bahFXGYj%26enablejsapi%3D1%26origin%3Dhttps%3A Editor’s note: The following transcript has been edited for clarity, brevity, and adherence to our editorial guidelines. Don’t Rush Into Overhauling Your Strategy Off the bat, I strongly advise not to rush into this. I know there’s an extreme amount of noise and buzz and advice out there on social media that you need to rethink your strategy because of LLMs, but this thing is very, very far from settled. For example, or most notably, AI Mode is still not in traditional search results. When that happens, when Google moves the AI Mode tab from being a tab into the main search results, the whole ecosystem is set for another upheaval, whatever that looks like, because we don’t actually know what that will look like. I personally think that Google’s Gemini demo (the one they did way, way back, where they showed customized results for certain types of queries with certain answer formats) might be what AI Mode ends up resembling more than what it does right now, which is purely a text-based output that sort of aligns with ChatGPT. I think Google will differentiate those two products once it moves AI Mode over from the tab into the main search results. So, things are not settled yet. And if you think they’re not. They are not settled yet. Rethinking Traffic Expectations From LLMs The other thing I want you to rethink is the traffic expectations from LLMs. There’s been a lot of talk about citations and traffic – citations and traffic, citations and traffic. I don’t think citations, and therefore traffic, are the main diamond within the LLM ecosystem. I believe mentions are. And I don’t think that’s anything really new, by the way. Traditionally, the funnel has been messy, and Google’s been talking about that for a long time. Now, you have an LLM that may be a starting point or a step in that messy funnel, but I don’t believe it’s fundamentally different. I’ll give you an example. If I’m looking for a pair of shoes, I might go to Google and search, [Are these Nike shoes any good?]. I might look at a website, then go to Amazon and look at the actual product. Then I might go to YouTube, see a review of the product, maybe watch a different one, go back to Amazon, have a look, check Google Shopping to see if it’s cheaper there, and then head back to Amazon to buy it. Now, you have an LLM thrown into the mix, and that’s really the main difference. Maybe now, the LLM gives me the answer. Or maybe Google gives me the answer. Then I go to Amazon, look at the product, go to Google Shopping to see if it’s cheaper, watch a YouTube review, maybe switch things up a bit, go back to ChatGPT, see if it recommends something different this time, go through the whole process, and eventually buy on Amazon. That’s just me, personally. It’s important to realize that the paradigm has been around for a while. But if you’re thinking of LLMs as a source of traffic, I highly recommend you don’t. They are not necessarily built for that. ChatGPT, specifically, is not built for citations or to offer traffic. It’s built to provide answers and to be interactive. You’ll notice you usually don’t get a citation in ChatGPT until the third, fourth, or fifth prompt, whatever it is. Other LLMs, like AI Mode or Perplexity, are a little bit more citation or link-based, but still, their main commodity is the output, giving you the answer and the ability to explore further. So, I’m a big believer that the brand mention is far more important than the actual citation, per se. Also, the citation might just be the source of information. If I’m asking, “Are Nike shoes good?” I might get a review from a third-party website, say, the CNET of shoes, and even if I click there, that’s not where I’m going to buy the actual shoe. So, the traffic in that case isn’t even the desirable outcome for the brand. You want users to end up where they can buy the shoe, not just read a review of it. The Importance Of Synergy And Context With Content The next thing is the importance of synergy and context with your content. In order to be successful with LLMs, it’s not about (and I’ve heard this before from people) that the top citations are just the ones that already do well on Google. Not necessarily. There might be a correlation, but not causation. LLMs are trying to do something different than search engines. They’re trying to synthesize the web to serve as a proxy for the entire web. So, what happens with your content across the web matters way more: How your content is talked about, where it’s talked about, who’s talking about it, and how often it’s mentioned. That doesn’t mean what’s on your site doesn’t factor in, but it’s weighted differently than with traditional search engines. You need to give the LLM the brand context to realize that you have a digital presence in this area, that you’re someone worth mentioning or citing. Again, I’d focus more on mentions. That’s not to say citations aren’t important (they are), but mentions tend

AI search has changed the rules. Hidden technical SEO debt could quietly destroy your brand’s AI presence. Strong Google rankings don’t guarantee visibility in AI. Reza Moaiandin If you’re a CMO, I feel your pain. For years, decades even, brand visibility has largely been an SEO arms race against your competitors. And then along comes ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, not to mention Google’s new AI-powered search features: AI Mode and AI Overviews. Suddenly, you’ve also got to factor in your brand’s visibility in AI-generated responses as well. Unfortunately, the technical shortcuts that helped your brand adapt quickly and stay competitive over the years have most likely left you with various legacy issues. This accumulated technical SEO debt could potentially devastate your AI visibility. Of course, every legacy issue or technical problem will have a solution. But your biggest challenge in addressing your technical SEO debt isn’t complexity or incompetence; it’s assumption. Assumptions are the white ants in your search strategy, hollowing out the team’s tactics and best efforts. Everything might still seem structurally sound on the surface because all the damage is happening inside the walls of the house, or between the lines of your SEO goals and workflows. But then comes that horrific day when someone inadvertently applies a little extra pressure in the wrong spot and the whole lot caves in. The new demands of AI search are applying that pressure right now. How solid is your technical SEO? Strong Search Rankings ≠ AI Visibility One of the most dangerous assumptions you can make is thinking that, because your site ranks well enough in Google, the technical foundations must be sound. So, if the search engines have no problem crawling your site and indexing your content, the same should also be true for AI, right? Wrong. Okay, there are actually a couple of assumptions in there. But that’s often the way: One assumption provides the misleading context that leads to others, and the white ants start chewing your walls. Let’s deal with that second assumption first: If your site ranks well in Google, it should enjoy similar visibility in AI. We recently compared Ahrefs data for two major accommodation websites: Airbnb and Vrbo. When we look at non-branded search, both websites have seen a downward trend since July. The most recent data point we have (Oct. 13-15, 2025) has Airbnb showing up in ~916,304 searches and Vrbo showing up in ~615,497. That’s a ratio of roughly 3:2. Image from author, October 2025 But when we look at estimated ChatGPT mentions (September 2025), Airbnb has ~8,636, while Vrbo has only ~1,573. That’s a ratio of ~11:2.