Quick take: probably yes, but not in quite the way you might expect. By late 2025, with AI Overviews fully baked into organic results and AI assistants being used more and more every month, there still isn’t a clear-cut, definitive playbook for what you need to do to get cited more often in their answers. And anyone who claims they’ve cracked the exact formula is selling you something.

That said, from what we’re learning about which domains these assistants tend to reference and cite, one thing looks pretty consistent: several of the core pillars of traditional SEO directly affect whether your site gains visibility inside AI results.

Why the sites that used to rank best are also the most likely to be cited by AI

Here’s the key idea: a lot of what classic SEO pushed for was essentially this: making websites easier to crawl, simpler to interpret for both people and bots, more accessible and readable, and better aligned with what users actually need. In other words, making the whole “search, find, solve” experience genuinely useful.

None of the aims of traditional SEO run counter to what AI systems need in order to produce confident answers. Even in this new AI-search world, those technical goals are still exactly what you want.

Do I still need SEO for my brand in an AI-first world?

If your brand relied on SEO and organic traffic before AI showed up, chances are you still need it—you just need to keep it maintained and adapt it to the new landscape. It’s true that AI assistant answers have reduced clicks (this has hit informational searches especially hard in 2025, with features like Google’s Gemini modules changing the game), but that doesn’t mean demand has vanished.

People are still turning to the internet for answers, and they’re still buying online more than ever.

The user journey has shifted, but the Q&A loop that leads to purchase decisions is still alive and well. The critical part is understanding that new path and showing up at the right moments.

Questions to ask if you want your brand to be cited by AI

Before deciding what kind of content a brand should publish to improve SEO and earn AI visibility, ask yourself:

My digital touchpoints, where I present my product/service…

• Can both users and Google/AI crawlers easily access and understand them?

• Do I lay out my products or services in a clear, logical hierarchy?

• From a technical standpoint, are my pages truly accessible?

• Are there technical issues that could be limiting my visibility?

• Can AI clearly tell who’s behind my site (author, brand, credentials, real contact info) and why it should trust them?

How I connect with users…

• Do I understand the searches that bring people to my brand at every stage of the journey (awareness, consideration, decision, after-sales)?

• Do I cover my product/service from multiple angles—needs, objections, use cases, pricing, alternatives?

• Do I have content mapped to each stage: inspirational, educational, comparison-driven, transactional, support?

• Am I showing up in the formats users actually prefer (video, deep-dive guides, short FAQs, hands-on examples)?

My authority online…

• Does my online presence reflect the same authority I have in the real market?

• Who’s talking about me, and in what context? (media, partners, customers, communities)

• Are weaker competitors getting more visibility than I am? If so, what are they doing differently?

If I start taking action…

• What does “showing up in AI” mean for my business, concretely? (traffic, leads, sales, share of voice, etc.)

• How will I track it?

• Do I have clear KPIs in place?

• How much of the outcome is SEO versus product, pricing, branding, or distribution?

• Am I ready to put in the internal time required (approvals, content production, technical work)?

Next step: an AI-focused SEO audit

With solid experience across all kinds of clients (from ecommerce to promotional sites, and everything in between), at Relevant we can assess your current search visibility and help you figure out what to do next. Different brands need different moves—and doing the same thing across the board usually isn’t the smartest bet.

From that audit, your SEO strategy should focus on fixing technical blockers that are holding visibility back, or, ideally, on pushing a solid site even further so it performs better in both search engines and AI answers. Just as important is how you engage users: depending on your situation, we’ll design and deliver the right content assets to reach them across every stage from discovery, to evaluating options, to choosing to trust you. And above all, we’ll work through a system grounded in trust, transparent processes, and ongoing measurement, so you can see clearly what impact each change is really having.