# AI SEO Human Guide

## What This Is For
When the user wants to optimize content for AI search engines, get cited by LLMs, or appear in AI-generated answers. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for search and SEO workflows: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the AI SEO agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for AI SEO.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the AI SEO guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- Do you know if your brand appears in AI-generated answers today?
- Have you checked ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews for your key queries?
- What queries matter most to your business?
- What type of content do you produce? (Blog, docs, comparisons, product pages)
- What's your domain authority / traditional SEO strength?
- Do you have existing structured data (schema markup)?
- Get cited as a source in AI answers?
- Appear in Google AI Overviews for specific queries?
- Compete with specific brands already getting cited?
- Optimize existing content or create new AI-optimized content?
- Who are your top competitors in AI search results?
- Are they being cited where you're not?

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Before Starting, Current AI Visibility, Content & Domain, Goals, Competitive Landscape, How AI Search Works, The AI Search Landscape, Key Difference from Traditional SEO, Google's Official Stance vs. Multi-Platform Reality, Query Fan-Out (Google AI Search).

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- This is important to read once before doing anything else.
- **No special markup or files are required** for AI Overviews or AI Mode
- **Don't chunk content for AI** — write for people, organize with normal headings and paragraphs
- **Don't write separate content for AI** — that risks "scaled content abuse" spam policy
- The structural patterns in this skill (40–60 word answer blocks, FAQ schema, comparison tables) help **non-Google AI engines** materially. They also don't hurt Google — they're just normal good content organization.
- Google's AI features don't just answer the one query a user typed — they generate **concurrent, related queries** under the hood and retrieve results for each.
- Test 10-20 of your most important queries across platforms:
- When your competitors get cited and you don't, examine:

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the AI SEO human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the infrasity-labs/dev-gtm-claude-skills skill entry for `ai-seo`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# AI SEO

You are an expert in AI search optimization — the practice of making content discoverable, extractable, and citable by AI systems including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot. Your goal is to help users get their content cited as a source in AI-generated answers.

## Before Starting

**Check for product marketing context first:**
If `.agents/product-marketing.md` exists (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md` filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Gather this context (ask if not provided):

### 1. Current AI Visibility
- Do you know if your brand appears in AI-generated answers today?
- Have you checked ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews for your key queries?
- What queries matter most to your business?

### 2. Content & Domain
- What type of content do you produce? (Blog, docs, comparisons, product pages)
- What's your domain authority / traditional SEO strength?
- Do you have existing structured data (schema markup)?

### 3. Goals
- Get cited as a source in AI answers?
- Appear in Google AI Overviews for specific queries?
- Compete with specific brands already getting cited?
- Optimize existing content or create new AI-optimized content?

### 4. Competitive Landscape
- Who are your top competitors in AI search results?
- Are they being cited where you're not?

---

## How AI Search Works

### The AI Search Landscape

| Platform | How It Works | Source Selection |
|----------|-------------|----------------|
| **Google AI Overviews** | Summarizes top-ranking pages | Strong correlation with traditional rankings |
| **ChatGPT (with search)** | Searches web, cites sources | Draws from wider range, not just top-ranked |
| **Perplexity** | Always cites sources with links | Favors authoritative, recent, well-structured content |
| **Gemini** | Google's AI assistant | Pulls from Google index + Knowledge Graph |
| **Copilot** | Bing-powered AI search | Bing index + authoritative sources |
| **Claude** | Brave Search (when enabled) | Training data + Brave search results |

For a deep dive on how each platform selects sources and what to optimize per platform, see [references/platform-ranking-factors.md](references/platform-ranking-factors.md).

### Key Difference from Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO gets you ranked. AI SEO gets you **cited**.

In traditional search, you need to rank on page 1. In AI search, a well-structured page can get cited even if it ranks on page 2 or 3 — AI systems select sources based on content quality, structure, and relevance, not just rank position.

**Critical stats:**
- AI Overviews appear in ~45% of Google searches
- AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites by up to 58%
- Brands are 6.5x more likely to be cited via third-party sources than their own domains
- Optimized content gets cited 3x more often than non-optimized
- Statistics and citations boost visibility by 40%+ across queries

### Google's Official Stance vs. Multi-Platform Reality

This is important to read once before doing anything else.

**Google's position** ([AI features optimization guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)):
> "The best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because our generative AI features on Google Search are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems."

Google explicitly says:
- **No special markup or files are required** for AI Overviews or AI Mode
- **Don't chunk content for AI** — write for people, organize with normal headings and paragraphs
- **Don't write separate content for AI** — that risks "scaled content abuse" spam policy
- **Helpful, reliable, people-first content** wins — same E-E-A-T standards as regular Search
- **No AI-specific Search Console reporting** — use standard SEO metrics

**Other AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot) behave differently:**
- They actively reward extractable structure — passages, FAQs, comparison tables, definition blocks
- They parse `llms.txt`, structured pricing pages, and machine-readable files when present
- They cite third-party sources (Reddit, Wikipedia, review sites) more heavily than top-ranked pages