HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR CONTENT FOR AI MODELS

900 million people use ChatGPT every week. 37% of consumers now start their searches with an AI tool instead of Google. And 62% trust AI to guide their brand decisions.

Meanwhile, most of the SEO industry is still sending monthly reports that lead with clicks.

In this 40-minute keynote from Digital Marketing Europe 2026, Jessica Redman makes the case that Generative Engine Optimisation isn't rebranded SEO - it's a different discipline with a different outcome.

SEO is about retrieval. GEO is about recommendation. The overlap in tactics doesn't make them the same job, any more than CRO is "just SEO" because it works on the same page.

Jess covers why the "it's just SEO" argument falls apart under scrutiny, what the Princeton/Georgia Tech GEO paper actually found, why 76.4% of ChatGPT's most-cited pages were updated in the last 30 days, and which specific tactics - from prompt research to third-party corroboration - are driving measurable AI visibility right now.

Transcript

1. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1 JESSICA REDMAN HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR CONTENT FOR AI MODELS
2. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2 JESSICA REDMAN ➔ SEO, GEO & CONTENT CONSULTANT ➔ DIDGEHEADS CO-FOUNDER jess__redz
3. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED You watching another talk about content and AI
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5. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1 question at the end. The answer is in this talk. First correct hand up wins £50 Amazon voucher. Pay attention. THE DEAL
6. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 58%
7. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 7 POSITION 1 CTR FOR AIO KEYWORDS ➔ Dec 2023 → 7.3% ➔ Dec 2025 → 1.6% A 58% collapse in 12 months. Source: Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords analysed, Feb 2026
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9. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
10. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 37% of consumers start searches with AI instead of Google https://eightohtwo.com/2026-ai-search-behavior-study/
11. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Usage of AI is now 56% the size of search worldwide
12. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 12 77% of consumers use AI AND search together Only 4% have abandoned search entirely Source: Semrush, Mar 2026
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14. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 62% of consumers now trust AI to guide their brand decisions. On par with traditional search. Source: Yext, 2,237 consumers across US, UK, France, Germany, Jul 2025
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16. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 16 THE INTERFACE CHANGED ➔ Uber didn't invent transport. ➔ Deliveroo didn't invent takeaway. ➔ ChatGPT didn't invent search. They changed the interface through which demand is captured. …. And that fundamentally changed behaviour.
17. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Hubspot experienced 70-80% decline in organic traffic between 2024 and 2025 HELP!! DO SOMETHING!
18. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 18 Hubspot had built its strategy on top-of-funnel content targeting broad, high-traffic keywords. “famous sales quotes,” “cover letter examples,” “resignation letter examples,” “real estate licenses” WIPED OUT BY AIO
19. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 19 HUBSPOT Just 10% of leads come from blog traffic now, down from what was once the majority of their pipeline.
20. THIS IS NOT A HUBSPOT PROBLEM 73% of B2B websites lost significant organic traffic between 2024 and 2025. 58% of US Google searches now end with zero clicks. Source: Onely / Semrush, 2025
21. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Meanwhile, in the SEO industry, most monthly reports still lead with one number: CLICKS. It’s not wrong. It’s just not the job.
22. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 22 GEO ISN’T A TRAFFIC STRATEGY It's a recommendation strategy. "can we rank?" "How do we show up when a buyer asks for help?"
23. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 23 SO, WHAT IS THE JOB? 23x conversion rate vs traditional organic Source: Seer Interactive (2025), Ahrefs / Passionfruit (2026)
24. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 24 STOP CREATING CONTENT FOR CLICKS, START CREATING IT FOR CONVERSATIONS
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26. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 26 "IF YOU RANK, YOU'LL BE RECOMMENDED" This is a lazy argument. 60% of AI Overview citations come from URLs that don't rank in the top 20. Source: AirOps, 2026
27. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED YOU CAN RANK AND STILL BE INVISIBLE. There's grounding, yes. But there's also: → Parametric knowledge → Fan-out queries → Abstraction & weighting you can't see Some researchers believe models have already "made up their minds" about what to recommend before retrieval even happens.
28. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 28 THIS ISN'T JUST OPINION Princeton, Georgia Tech & The Allen Institute formalised "Generative Engine Optimization" in a peer-reviewed paper at KDD 2024. Their finding: GEO tactics can boost visibility in generative engines by up to 40%. The tactics that work are NOT the tactics SEOs default to.
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30. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 30 THE TOP 3 TACTICS THAT MOVED THE NEEDLE 1. Statistics addition +40% 3. Citing credible sources +30% 2. Quotation addition +37% 03 02 01
31. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 31 1. Prompt research 2. Recommendation research 3. Diagnose recommendation gaps 4. Define recommendation inputs 5. Build recommendation-ready assets 6. Reduce ambiguity across the wider web 7. Measure properly https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-geo-expert-should-actually-doing-andrew-holland--wloae/ GEO IS 7 JOBS
32. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ➔ AirOps ➔ N8N
33. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 33 HOMEPAGE COMMERCIAL PAGES MID FUNNEL CONTENT EDUCATIONAL CONTENT HOW-TO GUIDES NEWS PUBLISHING Priority content
34. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 34 THIS WORKFLOW DROVE +54% UPLIFT IN SoV FOR ENHESA
35. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 35 85% OF BRAND MENTIONS IN AI ANSWERS COME FROM THIRD-PARTY SOURCES. Source: AirOps, 2026 State of AI Search
36. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 36 ➔ Reviews. ➔ Reddit. ➔ YouTube. ➔ Directories. ➔ Author bios. ➔ Partner pages. ➔ Press mentions.
37. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 37 I ran a test on a personal training website I own. I built hundreds of local citations. Then I deleted them all….
38. UGC: The trust layer for AI search 50% of AI citations come from UGC and community platforms
39. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 39 REDDIT ISN’T JUST FOR B2B!!! Create a subreddit for your brand Send customers there to talk about use cases, share tips, get excited, get advice etc
40. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 40 REVIEW PLATFORMS RULE 3x HIGHER CHANCE OF CHATGPT CITATION G2 TRUSTPILOT CAPTERRA CHECKA TRADE • Voice reviews contain 3x more content than form-based reviews • More content = more language patterns for AI to learn = better representation in AI answers • Recency matters - the more recent, the higher the impact on AEO Credit: Alex David - GM AI Solutions @ G2
41. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 41 OFFSITE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER Digital PR/CAMPAIGNS: AWARENESS TRENDS, RECIPES, AWARENESS DAYS CONSIDERATION COMPARISON PAGES, REVIEWS, UGC CONVERSION COMMERCIAL TERMS, PRODUCT PAGES INSPIRATION MINDSET FUNCTION
42. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 42 STRUCTURED CONTENT EARNS 2.8X MORE AI CITATIONS What "structured" means in practice: → Comparison pages with 3+ tables: +25.7% citations → Validation pages with 8 list sections: +26.9% → Sentences ≤10 words on shortlist pages: +18.8% Data keeps showing the pages winning citations were almost all updated in the last few months. Source: AirOps, 2026
43. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Radix
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45. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ➔ Find the gap ➔ Use stats to build trust ➔ Structure well ➔ Own the narrative
46. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Well structured comparison pages with tables, data and neutrality helped us take share of voice from our direct competitors.
47. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 47 TL;DR = 32% improvement in citation position
48. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 48 RENDER A MARKDOWN VERSION OF URLS Courtesy of G2. Average impact across site +100% - some pages showed +300% Running my own tests - seen +5% increase in citations but too early to be conclusive.
49. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 49 THE SINGLE BIGGEST PREDICTOR OF AI VISIBILITY ➔ Pages updated within 30 days: 76.4% of ChatGPT's most-cited content. ➔ Pages NOT updated quarterly: 3x more likely to lose citations. ➔ For commercial queries, 60% of AI citations come from pages refreshed in the last 6 months. The signal AI models care about most: RECENCY. Source: AirOps 2026 State of AI Search, Seer Interactive
50. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BUILD A WORKFLOW!!!
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52. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 52 SCAN TO GET MY GEO CLAUDE SKILL A GEO skill for Claude Code that helps you optimise your content for AI model citations. Run /geo in Claude Code with any page, blog post, or content brief, and it will audit your content against research-backed tactics, identify gaps in your AI visibility, and tell you exactly what to change to increase your chances of being cited and recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
53. EXTERNAL | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 53 THE QUESTION WHAT’S THE BIGGEST PREDICTOR OF AI VISIBILITY?