Last week we amused ourselves by asking Gemini ‘Who does the best content marketing in Leicestershire?’
The results are below:
Now of course, we could say that we are showing up in Gemini’s results because we’re killing it at GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and have been working hard on our vector embeddings. But alas that wouldn’t be the truth.
While we are keeping up to date with optimising for LLMs, we’re not tying ourselves in knots about things which aren’t proven to be effective – yet. What we are doing is putting our effort into what we know works well for internet users because it just makes sense.
Reviews and testimonials
This includes featuring testimonials on our Homepage. It’s the page that’s landed on the most for the vast majority of websites, so why wouldn’t we want new visitors to see how great our clients say we are? If we say it, it means something but if someone else says it, it means a lot more.
And oh, did we mention search engines love reviews, too? If you’ve not heard of EEAT, the most important thing to know is that Google in particular needs websites to demonstrate how much Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness they have. If that’s done well, it’s rewarded. If it’s done badly, or dishonestly, sites tend to dive down the rankings.
And hey what do you know? LLMs such as Gemini seem to be a fan of reviews too – it’s one of the reasons it’s rating us as one of the best content marketing companies in Leicestershire.
So, while we all decide whether vector embedding is worthwhile (or whether to leave the AI bots to do what they were designed for) we’ll be putting the hard work in with SEO and content. Because, well – AI has to find the information from somewhere, right?
What content do LLMs care about?
To help us decide, let’s go back in time a little. ChatGPT has been around since 2022. A 2024 Think With Google article stated ‘Over the last six months, the volume of searches with five or more words grew 1.5X as fast as shorter queries compared to the same time period last year.’
This makes sense – we can be far more specific, in fact the results we get back from LLMs are usually better if we are more specific.
A recent article by Novos suggests that most searches performed using LLMs tend to contain 3 or 4 needs. For example, instead of searching for ‘size 5 hiking boots’ LLM users would be more likely to say something like ‘size 5 hiking boots in black or brown, suitable for plantar fasciitis sufferer, lightweight and waterproof.’
Now let’s go back even further, to 2013 when Google released ‘Hummingbird’ (yes, it really was 12 years ago) which helped its systems and algorithms to understand human language better. Goodbye exact-match keywords, hello semantics. And ‘how to’ content – lots of it.
What can we glean from all of this?
Your content needs to be more targeted. If you’re an estate agent and are still saying ‘perfect for first time buyers or investors’ at the bottom of your listings, it’s not going to cut the mustard any more. Same for ecommerce stores. LLMs don’t care if this ‘fit is ideal for your Christmas party or this lip-gloss will make your whole look ‘pop’’.
So, how can you make your content work for GEO?
Think about what your product or service is actually good for – what makes it different and really appealing?
What can you say that will reach out of the screen and grab your potential customer by the heart strings, pull on that chord in their brain or smack them in the face with the realisation that this is exactly what they’re looking for?
And whatever you do, don’t hide this information in big blocks of text. Use subheadings, bullet points or even better (loved by human and robot alike) comparison tables.
What else can us mere mortals be doing to optimise for LLMs? … And people.
We (along with most of the other SEO and content agencies across the world) are finding that many of the same SEO principles and initiatives are working as well in LLMs as they are in search engines. What’s interesting is that some are working better than others.
Here are a few SEO and brand-related initiatives which need to go into your roadmap (you can even classify them as ‘GEO’ if there’s someone on your back to be covering that too):
1. Get cited externally (especially by sources that LLMs like to use)
- Get people talking about you on Reddit – yes, really
- Get people talking about you on YouTube
- Get people talking about you on Review platforms
- Get people talking about you on social media
- Get journalists talking about you
2. Be an authority
- Display how credible you are on your website – literally tell anyone visiting ‘This is why to choose us’
- Don’t be shy about displaying information about your expertise
- Say yes to speaking opportunities – in real life and on podcasts. LLMs are probably already listening…
- Publish LinkedIn articles and comment on other people’s posts to give your expert opinion
3. Internal linking
- Internal linking is as powerful as ever. Don’t put loads of effort into your content only to leave it stagnating on a blog. Make sure you link to it from relevant places on your site – I promise they exist
- To make sure you’re doing a good job, crawl your website using a platform like Screaming Frog and use custom extraction to check for anchor text that includes ‘click here’ or ‘here’. If you’re linking to other words on your website with the same anchor text that millions of other websites use, you’re not clearly showing LLMs or search engines what that link is about. Make it easy for them and say ‘read the study’ or ‘see our testimonials’ when linking instead
- Check out this article by Seer Interactive for a test that had ChatGPT referencing whatever they changed the footer on their website to say
Need help with your GEO or SEO content plan?
If you’re on board with an agency that offers an honest approach, doesn’t try to charge you extra for reinventing the wheel and can create the kind of ‘smack-you-in-the-face-with-clarity’ style content I mentioned earlier, you’ll love working with us. Check out our case studies to see other people who do, too.
