Think about your own search behavior lately. How often do you ask ChatGPT or Claude a question instead of Googling it? If you're like most people, it's happening more and more. And when that AI gives you an answer, whose brand gets mentioned? That's the LLMO game right there.
What Exactly Is LLMO?
LLMO is basically the art of making AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Google's AI Overview, and Perplexity actually talk about your brand when people ask relevant questions. Instead of optimizing for search engines to show your link in results, you're optimizing to become the answer itself.
According to recent research by Ahrefs, traditional organic web clicks from search engines have decreased by approximately 34%, primarily due to AI-generated snippets directly answering user queries. That's not a small shift, that's a fundamental change in how people find information.
Here's a simple example: instead of someone Googling "best project management tools" and clicking through ten different websites, they might ask Claude "What's the best project management tool for a small design agency?" If your brand is mentioned in that response, you've just won the LLMO lottery.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
The global LLM market is expected to expand by 36% from 2024 to 2030. Half of all search engine traffic could vanish by 2028, as per Gartner. We're not talking about a trend here, we're talking about a complete shift in how people discover and evaluate brands.
When an AI mentions your brand, something magical happens. You're not just getting visibility, you're getting implied endorsement from what users perceive as an objective source. It's like having the world's most trusted friend recommend you to everyone who asks.
The competitive advantage here is huge. Research shows that good LLMO strategies can make sources up to40% more visible in generative engine responses. Companies that figure this out early are going to have a serious edge over those still focused purely on traditional SEO.
How to Actually Do LLMO (The Practical Stuff)
Let's cut through the theory and talk about what actually works. I've been testing LLMO strategies across different clients, and here are the tactics that consistently move the needle:
1. Become the Source of Specific Data
AI systems love to cite specific data points and statistics. In fact, it's one of the most reliable ways to get your brand mentioned. If you can become the go-to source for industry statistics, benchmarks, or unique research, AI models will reference you constantly.
Create annual reports, conduct surveys, or publish original research in your field. When someone asks an AI about trends in your industry, you want to be the source it quotes.
2. Write Like You're Answering Questions
LLMs further promote the shift from keyword matching to natural language queries. You should optimize your content for question-based terms that users might type into AI chatbots. Structure your content to directly answer the questions your audience is actually asking.
Instead of writing "5 Tips for Better Email Marketing," write "How do I improve my email open rates?" and then provide a clear, direct answer. AI models prefer content that sounds conversational and directly addresses user intent.
3. Get Mentioned onHigh-Authority Sites
Identify sites or pages in your niche that LLMs commonly cite. Then work to get your brand mentioned on those sites or pages. That way, LLMs may be more likely to include your brand in their responses.
This isn't about traditional backlinks, it's about being mentioned by name in the right context on sites that AI models trust. Focus on getting quoted in industry publications, contributing to Wikipedia pages, or being featured incase studies.
4. Structure Your Content for AIConsumption
Optimizing content at the passage level could be helpful because LLMs often use passage-level retrieval(meaning they look for the most relevant segments of text rather than the most relevant documents).
Use clear headings, write in short paragraphs, and make sure each section can stand alone. Avoid complex references that depend on earlier parts of your content. AI models need to be able to extract chunks of your content and have them make sense in isolation.
5. Build Topical Authority Clusters
Topical authority is the depth and breadth of content coverage on a specific subject, structured around a central entity and its related concepts. Don't just write one article about your main topic, create comprehensive coverage that establishes you as the definitive source.
If you're in project management software, don't just write about your product. Write about team productivity, remote work challenges, project methodologies, and everything related. AI models will start associating you with the entire topic area.
The Visual Content OpportunityEveryone's Missing
Here's where things get really interesting. Many LLMs cite various content formats in their responses. Google's AI Overviews sometimes include linked image results, and AI models now interpret images, diagrams, and captions.
Most brands are still thinking about LLMO as a text-only game, but visual content is becoming a massive opportunity. An internal study of 1,200 AI Overview results found that content with structured diagrams and informative captions earned3.2× more citations even when compared to higher-authority text-only pages.
This is where services like Iklipse become incredibly valuable for LLMO strategies. Instead of using generic stock photos that every competitor uses, you can create unique, branded visuals that AI models can reference and cite. When your product images, infographics, and visual content are distinctive and well-optimized, they become part of your LLMO strategy.
Imagine having AI models not just mention your brand in text, but also reference your specific visual content when explaining concepts in your industry. That's next-level brand recognition.
The Technical Side (Without Getting Too Nerdy)
LLMO aims to design content in such a way that it is preferentially recognised, understood and used in responses by generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot or Perplexity AI.
From a technical perspective, this means:
Schema markup matters more than ever: Use structured data to help AI models understand exactly what your content is about.
Semantic relationships are key: Don't just optimize for keywords, optimize for concepts and how they relate to each other.
Consistency across platforms: Make sure your brand information is consistent everywhere online. AI models notice inconsistencies and it hurts your credibility.
Regular content updates: Regularly updating your content signals to AI models that your information is current and trustworthy.
Measuring LLMO Success
Traditional SEO metrics don't tell the full LLMO story. Watch for: AI Citation Rate, Multimodal Mentions, Conversational Resurfacing. You need to track whether your content is being pulled into AI summaries, whether your images get cited, and whether you show up in follow-up queries.
Start monitoring mentions of your brand in AI responses. Set up alerts for when your content gets referenced. Track which of your articles or resources AI models cite most frequently.
The Integration Strategy
LLMO doesn't replace SEO, it builds on it to ensure content is visible across new, AI-first interfaces. The smartest approach is treating LLMO as an extension of your existing content strategy, not a replacement.
Your SEO-optimized content can often be enhanced for LLMO with relatively small changes. Add more direct answers, improve your visual content, create better structured data, and focus on becoming a more authoritative source in your niche.
Getting Started Tomorrow
Don't wait for someone else to figure this out first. Companies that are already looking into LLMO are likely to gain a significant competitive advantage in the foreseeable future.
Start with one piece of content. Take your best-performing blog post and optimize it for LLMO. Add direct answers to common questions, include some original data or statistics, improve the visual elements, and see what happens.
The brands that master LLMO early will have a massive advantage as AI-powered search continues to grow. The question isn't whether this shift will happen, it's whether you'll be ready for it.
LLMO is still the wild west right now. The rules are still being written, which means there's a huge opportunity for early adopters to establish themselves before the space gets crowded. The time to start experimenting is now, while you can still carve out your territory in the AI-powered future of search.
