8 Ways to Make Your Content Citable In AI Overviews
You’ve created the content. You’ve optimised the page. You’ve built internal links, earned backlinks and worked your way onto page one of Google. So why isn’t your article showing up in AI overviews? It’s a question more SEO teams are asking.
As search evolves from a list of blue links into AI-generated answers, there’s a new challenge for content marketers, which is being able to get your content discovered, understood and selected to feature as a source.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. You won’t need to throw away traditional SEO marketing out the window, because it still counts for something. Many of the fundamentals that make a page useful on Google will be useful in making the article discoverable on SERPs, for example, relevance, authority, having a clear structure, strong content and good technical SEO.
The only difference now is that ranking is no longer the only result worth thinking about. Ranking on AI overviews means that your content needs to do more than just rank. It needs to provide a good answer that AI search systems can retrieve and use. So, what does that mean for SEO?
AI search is changing the meaning of what it means to rank
Traditionally, SEO has focused mainly on how to get the landing page to rank for searches that increase clicks and conversions. With AI thrown into the mix, we now need to ask ourselves how to make the page useful enough to be selected as a source when AI generates the answer people ask. The two are different outcomes.
Traditional search engines would return ten results for a query (meaning you would want your content to land on the first page to get seen). AI, on the other hand, will retrieve information from various sources and assess which results are relevant to the questions being asked. It will then synthesise the best answer for you.
Your page might therefore be:
Ranking highly but not being cited
Ranking lower but being selected as a source
Appearing for one question but not another
Cited for a very specific piece of information rather than the whole topic
So, this is why query-level relevance is crucial. Now, instead of optimising a page around keywords that have high search volume, we should be thinking about the range of questions and intents that sit behind the topic.
1. Relevance still matters (more than ever)
The most obvious SEO principle is relevance. So, if your audience is asking how often to send out email marketing emails, you’ll know that creating an article around email marketing strategy will be useful. But an article specifically answering how often a small business should send marketing emails will be much more aligned with the query.
Search intent then also becomes important. So, instead of only targeting the relevant keyword, you need to ask yourself what information the audience is actually looking for. This may mean that you’ll need to create multiple pieces of content that is more focused, rather than one big piece of content.
2. Build topical authority
One article won’t be able to establish genuine expertise around the topic. Rather, if your website publishes consistently useful content around a specific topic, you’ll create a much stronger topical footprint for your audience.
For example, if you’re selling SEO software, you might publish content covering:
Keyword research
Search intent
On-page SEO
Technical SEO
Internal linking
Link building
Content optimisation
AI search
Search visibility measurement
This way, individual pages will answer specific questions, while the wider collection demonstrates depth. This is where topic authority becomes important and the focus needs to shift away from publishing hundreds of articles just for the sake of it. The focus needs to be on building a coherent body of useful content that demonstrates genuine knowledge of a subject.
3. E-E-A-T still has a role to play
Google has a framework (E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) that is built around building trust with the audience and delivering content that is highly relevant and adds value. This is especially important when creating content around topics that are highly competitive.
4. Original content gives AI a reason to use you
Originality will always trump content that has been copy/pasted from search results. So, when you’re creating a piece of content, think of adding one of the following:
Consider adding:
Proprietary research
Surveys
Customer data
First-hand observations
Expert interviews
Case studies
Original experiments
Industry analysis
Unique examples
There may be hundreds of other articles out there that explain that SEO takes time, but if your article has in-depth research by having analysed and published data that shows how long different SEO strategies take place, your content can be used by others as a reference point. This makes your content more valuable and more cite-worthy for sure.
5. Make your answers easy to extract
LLMs need to be able to retrieve information easily from your content, which is why structuring your content clearly will improve the likelihood of your content being cited. Be sure to use descriptive headings that tell the reader and LLMs what that specific section is going to be about. Structuring your headings as questions can also help LLMs pick up on the content you’re writing. For example: “How long does SEO take to produce results?”.
Short paragraphs, logical headings, lists, tables and clear definitions can all help users navigate your content. And when humans can quickly understand a page, machines generally have an easier job interpreting it too.
6. Answer the question early
Be sure to give your readers the answer to what your article is going to answer as quickly as possible. Try not to make your readers have to scan through the whole article before answering the question.
Once you’ve given your answer to the question, you can explain your reasoning and add nuance where needed.
7. Internal linking can help establish context
Internal linking helps to pass authority from one page to another as well as establish relationships between the pieces of content. This also helps establish a clear topical structure within your website and helps your users discover related information and helps LLMs and search engines piece your content together.
8. Don't create content just because a keyword tool says so
Although keyword research is important and helps you understand what your audience is searching for, it doesn’t need to become a content production machine. For example, if you find 10 keywords around the same topic, you don’t need to create 10 different articles. At the same time, you don’t need to force every keyword into the same article.
Rather think about whether the search terms would be better in one comprehensive resource or a few focused pages. Make sure, however, that you aren’t creating multiple content pieces that target the same keyword.
So, how do you get your article cited by AI?
Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed formula. LLMs are constantly evolving and different platforms use different technologies, indexes and signals. The underlying principle, however, is that you should be creating content that deserves to be used and cited.
Do this by making sure that you answer specific questions, build topical authority, demonstrate expertise and support important claims. Also, make sure that you’re publishing original insights and research, too, to make your content valuable enough to be cited in the AI overviews.
Are you looking to start making content for your business? Get in touch today for more information on how to begin the process with Between the Lines Creative!
