AI Search
SEMRUSH ONE
Stay Ahead in AI Search & Traditional SEO
In AI search, you don't "rank," you earn visibility. That is, your brand gets name-dropped as a potential solution, or your content gets cited as a source backing up the answer.
In this guide, we'll show you how to earn visibility in AI-generated search results. We'll break down the process into 22 steps you can apply over the next six months.
To help you implement the steps in this guide, we’ve also created an SEO playbook template.
This template maps the steps in this guide across six months, showing you what to do each month to improve your visibility.
Here’s the template:
Share the template with your team to align on priorities and track progress as you work through each step.
Let’s get into it.
In month 1, you'll measure your current AI search visibility, set targets for where you want to be in six months, and audit your website for issues to fix.
Measure your current visibility in AI platforms for the queries (aka keywords) you care about. You'll use this baseline to set targets for growth in the next step.
You could manually search each keyword across different platforms, but if you have a very large list of keywords, it could take a lot of time to check them all and record the results.
So, we recommend using a specialized tool that can automate monitoring for you.
We recommend Semrush's Enterprise AIO, which is built for comprehensive AI visibility monitoring at the enterprise level. (For smaller teams, the AI Visibility Toolkit covers the same ground at a lower tier — see the closing section for the distinction.)
To get started, set up a project for your website:
Once your project is set up, wait for a few hours while the tool analyzes AI responses for your tracked queries. Then, you'll see a dashboard with your current performance in AI search:
This is your baseline: the starting point you'll measure all future progress against.
Here's what each metric tells you:
Record these numbers as your baseline in the SEO playbook template.
Define specific, measurable goals for what you want to achieve in AI search over the next six months.
Use your baseline numbers from step one as your starting point, and set a target for each metric. Here are some benchmarks to guide you:
Keep it ambitious but realistic. If your goals don't make you a little nervous, they're probably not ambitious enough.
Write down your goals in the SEO playbook template, below your baseline numbers. You'll revisit them at the end of the six-month period to measure your overall progress and whether you achieved your goals.
Check your robots.txt file to confirm you're not accidentally blocking AI platforms from accessing your content.
For you to gain visibility in AI search, AI platforms first need to be able to access your site. That’s a baseline requirement.
Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity use crawlers (automated programs) to access websites and index content. Indexing means storing the content in a database so AI can retrieve and reference it when users search for relevant topics.
You can check if any crawler is blocked on your site by looking at your robots.txt file (a special file that contains instructions for crawlers).
You can find your robots.txt file by going to yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. Look for directives like these (this example is showing what an AI crawler block looks like — it's what you want to avoid):
The user-agent directive specifies which crawler the rule applies to. And the disallow directive is the instruction for that crawler about which pages or sections of your site it should not access.
In the example above, we're essentially telling Claude-SearchBot (Claude's web crawler) to ignore the website completely.
Make sure you're not doing this on your own site. Go through each entry in your robots.txt file and pay close attention to rules targeting crawlers like Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI's search crawler for ChatGPT), PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot. If any of them are blocked, remove those rules immediately.
In the SEO playbook template, make note of any issues you found and the changes you made.
Audit your website to check for other issues that might be preventing your pages from being properly crawled and indexed.
Your robots.txt file isn't the only thing that can keep crawlers from doing their job. Other technical issues on your site can get in the way, too.
To check for issues, an auditing tool like Semrush's Site Audit will come in handy. Open the tool, set up a project for your domain, and run a full crawl.
Once done, go to the “Issues” tab. You'll see all the issues the tool has detected on your site.
Review the report to see if you have the following issues related to crawling and indexing:
If you find any of these problems, note them in your playbook template and share them with your dev team for resolution.
Find factual inaccuracies or misleading claims in AI-generated responses about your brand so you can correct them later.
Being visible in AI search is one thing; being accurately represented is another.
AI doesn't always get things right. When generating answers, it pulls from a wide range of sources across the web, and the result can be outdated, incomplete, or just plain wrong. AI might:
This type of misinformation can influence how people see you.
So, find out what AI says about you. Run a set of brand-focused queries across the major AI search platforms:
Every time you spot an inaccuracy, document it in your SEO playbook template.
Note the query, the AI platform, what AI said, the sources it cited, and what the correct information should be. Don't fix these issues yet — we'll tackle that in a later step.
Identify which pages AI platforms are citing and evaluate whether those pages contain fresh, accurate information.
In most cases, a handful of pages will be responsible for the majority of your citations and mentions.
In Enterprise AIO, open the tool and navigate to "Prompt Tracking" > "Sources" > "URLs," then filter the report to see URLs specific to your domain.
Analyze these pages and ask yourself:
Note: At this point, you're only looking at your own cited pages. To get a fuller picture of what AI favors in your space, you'll look at all cited sources across your tracked queries in step 12.
For now, document your observations in the SEO playbook template.
Find out how your brand is being talked about across the web and where those mentions are coming from.
There are two types of mentions to pay attention to:
Both these types of mentions matter for gaining visibility in AI search.
To find linked mentions, use Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool. Open the tool, enter your domain, and go to the "Backlinks" tab. Filter the anchor text column for your brand and product names to isolate brand mentions.
To find your unlinked mentions, use Semrush's Brand Monitoring tool. Just set up a project for your domain, and you'll see who is mentioning you across the web.
Analyzing your brand mentions helps you:
For now, log your findings in the SEO playbook template: source URLs, whether each mention is linked or unlinked, the overall sentiment, and any inaccuracies worth flagging.
Include your most active referring domains too. These are the sites you'll reach out to later for collaboration and link building opportunities.
In month 2, you'll make strategic improvements to your existing pages so AI platforms can better understand and cite them.
The goal isn't to recreate pages from scratch. You'll focus on high-impact changes to improve how your pages perform in AI search.
Focus on the pages that matter most to your business: your homepage, product and service pages, and blog posts targeting your most important keywords.
Take a list of these pages and add them to the designated section in our SEO playbook template.
Then, analyze the content of each page and make the following changes where required:
Here's a real example of AI-optimized content.
This blog post about knowledge panels is well-structured, uses declarative sentences, and keeps the content concise while still packing in useful information.
We've also added information gain, where we've brought in an expert who shared a unique perspective on an important point related to this topic.
Plus, there are relevant entities woven throughout the post that give AI the context it needs to properly understand the content.
While you're making these AI-specific improvements, make sure the classic on-page SEO elements are also optimized. These include:
As you work on each page, update the status in your SEO playbook template so you can track which pages have been optimized and which are yet to be optimized.
Add schema markup to your pages so AI platforms can parse what your content is about and cite it confidently.
Schema markup is code you add to your site that tells search engines and AI platforms what type of content they're looking at and what the various attributes are.
Start by identifying which schema types are most relevant for your pages:
Here's an example of schema markup code. Don't worry if it seems technical — this is for reference, and you don't need to write it from scratch.
You can use a schema markup generator to create the code for you. Fill out a form with your page's details, and the code generates automatically. Add the code to your page's HTML; the <head> tag is standard, though <body> works too.
Once added, validate your markup using Google's Rich Results Test to confirm it's error-free.
Document which pages you've added schema to in your playbook template, along with the schema types you've implemented.
Organize your site so crawlers can efficiently discover and access all your important pages.
You’ve already checked your robots.txt file during the first month and fixed any technical issues that could be blocking crawlers from your site.
Now, it's time to optimize your website structure to make crawling as efficient as possible.
Organize your website in a logical hierarchy: your homepage links to category pages, and category pages link to individual pages.
Like this:
The deeper a page is buried, the harder it is for crawlers to find. Keep your most important pages (product pages, key landing pages, and blog posts) within two to three clicks from the homepage.
Don't overlook your footer. It's sitewide real estate most teams underuse.
In your footer, include links to important pages that didn't fit in your main navigation, like top-performing blog posts and product comparison pages. Because footer links appear on every page, they reinforce those pages' importance to crawlers and AI platforms.
In the SEO playbook template, document the issues you saw in your website structure and the changes you’re going to make.
In months 3 and 4, you'll focus on content: refreshing what you have and creating new pieces AI is likely to cite.
Update outdated pages so they remain accurate, relevant, and cite-worthy. When AI platforms cite outdated content from your site, it reflects poorly on your brand, and you may lose citations entirely as AI platforms favor more current information.
Start with the top-cited pages you identified in month 1. These pages are already performing well in AI search, and keeping them current ensures they continue to get cited.
Then, work through the rest of the pages on your site. Here are some things to look for and update as you go through them:
As you work on each page, update the relevant fields in the SEO playbook template to record the changes you’ve made and track which content has been refreshed.
Create content in the formats that AI platforms already prefer.
You started exploring this during the first month, when you audited your top-cited pages and noted the formats.
But don't just look at your own pages. Get the full picture of what AI favors in your space by looking at all pages being cited across your tracked queries.
To do this, open Semrush's Enterprise AIO tool, go back to "Prompt Tracking" > "Sources" > "URLs."
For example, you might discover that the types of content being cited most often are:
Whatever those formats are, note them down in your SEO playbook template. Then double down on these winning formats and create more content like them.
Don't limit yourself to publishing on your site. Many of your content ideas can be repurposed as YouTube videos, LinkedIn articles, or X posts — AI pulls from these platforms too when generating responses, so publishing across formats pays off.
We'll cover content repurposing in step 17.
Build content hubs around core topics. For each hub, create a pillar page that covers the topic broadly, then cluster pages that cover specific subtopics and link back to the pillar. For example, a personal finance hub might have "saving and budgeting," "debt payoff strategies," and "retirement planning" as cluster pages.
This shows AI platforms that your site is an authority on these topics, making them more likely to cite your content.
A content hub visualized would look like this:
Here’s how you can create content hubs for your site:
Use Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool to validate your topic selection and find additional cluster page ideas.
Search for the main topic to see whether people are searching for it on Google.
Then check the "Related" and "Questions" tabs to uncover subtopic ideas you might have missed.
After you've decided on your core topics and related subtopics, document them in your SEO playbook template. And update the other fields as you build out these pages.
Find the questions people ask AI about your topic, and answer them directly in your content so you get cited.
Semrush's Prompt Research tool, part of the AI Visibility Toolkit, helps you find these prompts. Enter the topic your article covers (for example, "mortgage refinancing") and you'll see a list of prompts people commonly enter into AI platforms.
Pick 3-5 prompts per article and note them down in your SEO playbook template.
Use these prompts as subheadings in your content and provide a direct answer to each question. The next section covers how to structure your content for retrieval.
As you're writing your content, organize information clearly so AI platforms can easily lift and reuse it.
Here are some formatting best practices to follow:
As you apply these formatting best practices to each page, update the SEO playbook template.
Google uses a framework called E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — to evaluate content quality. Other AI platforms likely apply similar quality signals.
Here's how to strengthen E-E-A-T for the content you’re creating:
To see what a meaningful difference this makes, here are some before-and-after examples.
Once you’re done improving your content’s E-E-A-T, update the SEO playbook template.
Repurpose your content across platforms to multiply your opportunities to get cited.
A single article can be broken down and rebuilt in multiple formats:
In the SEO playbook template, you can track which content you've repurposed and which platforms you've published it on.
In month 5, you'll build your brand's presence across the wider web.
Build links and unlinked brand mentions across reputable sites — both influence how AI systems recognize your authority.
The more your brand appears across reputable sites, the more likely AI systems are to treat you as an authoritative source.
Here is how you can build more mentions across the web:
Track your outreach efforts in the designated section inside the SEO playbook template.
Incorrect or outdated information about your brand on third-party sites can be picked up and cited by AI platforms, spreading misinformation further.
So you should take steps to identify and correct these inaccuracies:
Here's an email template you can use when contacting site owners or editors to request corrections.
Subject: Correction Request: [Your Brand Name] Information
Hi [Name],
I'm [Your Name], [Your Role] at [Your Company].
I noticed your article on [Title] includes some outdated information about [Your Brand Name].
Would you be able to update this information? I'm happy to provide any additional details you need.
Thanks for helping keep this accurate for your readers.
Best,
[Your Name]
[Your Title]
[Your Company]
Log your outreach efforts in the SEO playbook template.
Do the same for business listings, and log your progress in the SEO playbook template.
Reddit ranks among the most frequently cited sources in AI responses, and Quora plays a similar role for question-and-answer queries. Join both platforms to answer questions where your expertise is useful.
Here's how to contribute to these platforms:
To start, identify 20-30 relevant threads on Reddit and Quora each and start contributing to them. You can track your forum contributions in the SEO playbook template.
In month 6, you'll analyze your progress, identify what worked, and double down on it.
Compare your current AI visibility metrics to the baseline you established in the first month to see how much you've improved and whether you hit the targets you set for yourself.
Go back to Enterprise AIO and review each metric:
Record your updated numbers in the SEO playbook template, and compare them to your baseline and original targets.
Now, take some time to reflect on the bigger picture:
Document your observations in the playbook template. If you didn't hit your targets exactly, don't worry — what matters more is whether your visibility improved meaningfully and whether you have a clear idea of what tactics worked best for your site.
By now, six months of work has likely delivered meaningful results. Build on that momentum by resetting the cycle: recalculate your baseline, set new targets, and work through the playbook again with better focus and clarity.
You now have six months of data telling you what worked and what didn't. Use that to make smarter bets in the next cycle.
If there are specific tactics that drove the most improvement, prioritize those and allocate more resources to them.
You'll likely have unfinished work from the first cycle — time constraints, competing priorities, or other reasons. Maybe you didn't build out all your content hubs, clean up every instance of outdated brand information, or contribute to every forum discussion. Carry those tasks over to the new cycle.
We designed this playbook as a living resource, not a one-time checklist. Edit the template and adapt it as you go.
A quick reminder on tooling: Enterprise AIO is built for enterprise-scale tracking, while the AI Visibility Toolkit covers the same fundamentals for smaller teams and standalone AI SEO work. Both are worth keeping in your stack if you're serious about growing visibility in AI search, and we're actively building new capabilities as AI search evolves.
We're continuously improving these tools, so expect new features and capabilities as AI search evolves.
Sign up to try our tools today.
Tushar Pol
Tushar has been involved in SEO for the past six years, specializing in content strategy and technical SEO. He gained his experience in agencies, where he worked on various ecommerce and B2B clients. On the Semrush blog, he writes about SEO and marketing based on experience drawn from his client work, focusing on sharing practical and effective strategies. His goal is to turn Semrush blog into the ultimate destination for learning SEO and web marketing.
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