Unlock AI Search Visibility
How to ensure your brand is visible in the AI search landscape.
Are you seeing rapidly declining CTR, poor traffic figures and visibility falling? You’re not alone – here’s what we’ve witnessed and how we’re addressing it.
The search landscape has dramatically shifted in the last 12 months, but what’s the true impact, and what do B2B marketers really need to know?
Firstly, the language around Search and AI is changing. We’re now seeing Search gurus and agencies positioning themselves as “GEO-first” or “AI-first,” but the tactical execution of campaigns hasn’t shifted as dramatically as the buzzwords suggest.
Here’s what you need to know about the evolving landscape…
LEO – Language Engine Optimisation
Optimising content for visibility and interaction within language-based AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.
Think of LEO as the strategic approach to being included in the answers AI provides. It’s about structuring and surfacing content in ways that make it consumable and trustworthy when large language models generate responses. This includes question-based content, expert insights, clear formatting, and context-rich material.
GEO – Generative Engine Optimisation
Optimising your brand to be a cited or preferred source within AI-generated responses across generative search platforms.
GEO focuses on making your content discoverable and referenced by AI-powered generative systems (like Google’s Search Generative Experience or Bing’s AI answers). This involves technical optimisation, authority signals (like backlinks and brand trust), and structured data to feed AI training models and summarisation engines.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
The foundation of digital visibility – optimising websites and content to rank in traditional search engines (Google, Bing, YouTube, DuckDuckGo, etc.).
Still vital, but evolving. Traditional SEO is no longer enough on its own. It must work alongside LEO and GEO to ensure total discoverability across all search environments, not just SERPs.
The search, social, and content landscape is shifting from simple navigation to hyper-personalised answers based on intent, behaviour, and ecosystem loyalty. Algorithms are no longer just ranking results, they’re curating experiences, designed to keep users within platforms, not send them to your site.
We’re seeing AI-driven engines like Gemini and Copilot favour content that can be cited, summarised, or absorbed into AI responses, reducing visibility of generic content and penalising anything that isn’t unique or genuinely insightful.
The Erosion (and Evolution) of the Funnel
The traditional funnel model is breaking down. The middle of the funnel, where educational content lived, used to be the prime real estate for B2B marketers. But AI now plays that educator role.
Users are conducting deep research through AI interfaces before they even reach your site. That doesn’t mean opportunity is lost; it means the strategy must evolve. Here’s how we see it:
- TOFU (Top-of-Funnel): AI can introduce your brand if your content is relevant, structured, and credible. Your content now needs to earn its way into AI responses, not just search rankings.
- MOFU (Middle-of-Funnel): Traditional whitepapers and long-form blogs may no longer be the key education tool. Instead, focus on audience insight, original research, and authoritative perspectives that AI can pull from, and users will trust.
- BOFU (Bottom-of-Funnel): With less traffic coming from generic search, brand trust and direct intent are more important. Strong brand recognition and credibility become critical in converting interest to action.
The opportunity? Brands that build meaningful IP invest in original thought and create distinct value will still own their funnel, just in a new shape. The challenge is no longer visibility – it’s utility.
The Impact
➡️ Click-through rates are declining. With AI summarising content directly, fewer users are clicking through to websites. Around 60% of all searches now result in zero clicks.
➡️ Multi-channel approach is no longer aspirational it’s critical to success, if you’re over invested in a single channel the likelihood is your brand will become undiscoverable in the long run. Audience behaviour has been multi-modal, multi-channel and omni-device for some time, so our content must be suitable for all.
➡️ Brand strength matters more than ever. Direct search and brand recall are now vital. Brands with poor recognition or limited trust signals will continue to decline. Collaboration between brand, performance, and PR is essential.
➡️ The importance of brand building. Creating long-lasting brands that people trust and search for directly is imperative, reducing the need to be discovered through unbranded searches. Brands with poor discoverability or brand recognition will continue to decline – which further emphasises the importance of an integrated brand, performance & PR approach.
➡️ Investing in and protecting our own IP / Data, it’s no longer good enough (it hasn’t been for a while), to just create generic content. We must invest in creating meaningful content that offers unique and original insight from experts, leveraging internal knowledge and third parties.
Our Approach
Our approach is designed to creating opportunity for brands, not just optimisation of websites or content. It’s a strategic framework that creates value for brands’ target audiences, by developing truly useful content that pairs to their pain points and challenges. We’re not creating content for search engines or LLMs we’re focused on creating content for target audiences, written by experts, rooted in proper insight, not just targeting keywords.
✅ Audience First – Create content for your ICPs (ideal customer profiles). Make it as helpful and useful as possible by writing for people, not just keywords. Your content creators should be subject matter experts, not just marketers. Clean content structure. Real value. Fresh angles.
✅ Content Originality – Your content must be unique to your brand. Use first-party data, original research, and expert commentary to differentiate. Don’t just repackage what’s already out there.
✅ Wider Context – Understand how your audience moves across the journey. Build content clusters that support multiple entry points. Map topics to stages of the funnel, even if the funnel isn’t linear anymore.
✅ Accessibility – Content must be crawlable, structured, and technically sound. Schema mark-up, semantic HTML, fast load times, and mobile usability all feed both traditional SEO and LEO/GEO discoverability.
✅ Authority – Trust is the ultimate ranking factor, whether in SERPs or AI models. Build backlinks. Partner with press, media, influencers. Amplify expert perspectives. Quality over quantity, always.
What This Means for B2B
The rules of digital discovery are shifting, but the fundamentals haven’t disappeared. AI might be changing how people research, but your job as a marketer hasn’t changed: earn attention, deliver value, and build trust.
B2B marketers who embrace this change will outperform. You don’t need to throw out your playbook, but you do need to evolve it. SEO is no longer a single discipline – it’s part of a broader discoverability strategy that includes LEO and GEO.
If your content is helpful, human, and original, you’ll still win. If your brand is trusted, expert-led, and consistently present across channels, you’ll still be found.
This isn’t about chasing algorithms, it’s about creating meaningful digital experiences that matter to your audience, wherever they’re searching.