How to Get Content to Rank in AI Search: 5 Proven Strategies

Key Takeaways:

• Add an Answer Box / Key Takeaways Section: Place a concise, 3–5 bullet point summary at the top of your content to help AI search engines quickly parse and understand your article.
• Use FAQs to Address Query Fan-Out: Include FAQs on service, location, and guide pages to cover a wide range of related questions that AI search engines love to pull from.
• Incorporate Branded Insights and Original Data: Share your company’s survey results, case studies, and branded insights to give your content unique value and authority.
• Update Content Dates to Maintain Freshness: Regularly update the publish date of your content to signal to AI search engines that your content is fresh and relevant.
• Post Across Multiple Platforms to Increase Mentions: Boost AI citations by sharing your content on platforms like Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

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As AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot continue to revolutionize the way people discover content, it’s essential for brands to optimize their websites for these new search technologies.

AI search doesn’t operate quite the same way as traditional search engines. Instead of displaying multiple links (like the traditional SERPs), it pulls from a variety of sources to provide a single, summarized answer – or AI overview. This shift means your content needs to be optimized not just for humans but also for these AI-driven platforms.

How to Create Content That is Cited By AI Search Engines

In this post, we’re going to cover the top five most effective ways to get content to rank in AI search and increase your chances of being cited, mentioned, and featured by AI systems. These strategies are the same ones we use at BKA Content to help our clients achieve higher visibility and more traffic.

1. Add an Answer Capsule or Key Takeaways Section at the Top of Your Content

One of the best ways to increase your chances of being cited in AI search engines is to give them a quick, structured answer to a query right at the top of your content. AI tools are designed to scan for fast, direct answers, and this tip is designed to give it to them.

Adding a “Highlights” or “Key Takeaways” section at the beginning of your article is an easy way to do this. This section should summarize the key points of your content in three to five bullet points, helping AI tools quickly understand the core information included in your content.

Why this works:

• AI-driven search tools love well-structured, concise content.
• Over 75% of the blog content cited in AI overviews has an answer capsule or highlight section at the top.
• It allows AI to easily parse your content and feature you as a relevant source.

Adding a key takeaways section to article content has shown the largest correlation between being cited in AI overviews vs any other tip, so start using it! Also, don’t forgot to use keywords in this content for SEO to make sure you’re giving the right signals on what your article is going to be all about.

Pro AI Search tip: You can even use AI tools like ChatGPT to help summarize your content into key takeaways. In fact, you SHOULD do this – it will summarize far better than you can, and it will put it in a layout that AI tools love to parse. Simply paste your article into the AI tool and ask for a concise summary in 3-5 bullet points.

2. Use FAQs on Main Pages to Address Query Fan-Out

Another key tactic to optimize your content for AI search is to include an FAQ section on your main pages (typically at the bottom of the page), especially for service pages, location pages, and longer guide-type content. FAQs help address what’s called query fan-out, meaning people may not always search directly for your main topic but will search for related questions.

When creating a comprehensive FAQ section in your content, you’re addressing:

• The most common questions people have.
• Questions they may ask next.
• Questions that AI search engines might fill in automatically.

Why this works:

• AI search engines prefer rich content that covers a wide range of related questions.
• Adding FAQs to your page makes it more likely to be cited in AI search results.

Pro AI Search Tip: Again, this involves using AI to help generate an FAQ for your page. Tell ChatGPT to learn what your business does and let it know you’re creating a location (or service page) on your site. Make sure to let it know the service and/or the location. Then ask it to create a list of 10 top FAQs that you can include on that page. Don’t just copy and paste straight to your page – first make sure it’s correct to what you actually do. But let AI tools help you do the heavy lifting!

3. Incorporate Branded Insights and Original Data into Content

One of the biggest opportunities to improve your content’s AI ranking is to include branded insights and original data. AI search engines are looking for unique content that offers fresh perspectives, real data, and proprietary viewpoints. Generic content or content generated entirely by AI tools can fall flat because it lacks authenticity and authority.

Here are some ideas of what you can add to your content to stand out in AI overviews:

• Share your own company’s survey results or case studies.
• Provide industry benchmarks.
• Include internal data and your brand’s perspective on general information.

Here’s a quick example of taking general information and putting your own brand’s perspective on it *in this instance, it would be BKA Content’s perspective on it):

Why this works:

• AI search engines value content that adds unique value and provides original data.
• Brand-specific insights help set your content apart from generic articles available online.

Pro AI Search Tip: If you’re looking to take your branded content to the next level, consider turning your articles into YouTube videos. YouTube videos are heavily cited by AI search engines. We found through our own testing of 20+ articles on our site that adding a video to your content can increase traffic, rankings, and AI citations by up to 30% (and sometimes up to 300%!).

4. Keep Your Content Fresh by Updating Publish Dates

Freshness and newness of content are crucial when optimizing your content for AI search engines. We’ve seen time and again at BKA Content that simply updating the date of your existing content—without making any other changes—can help boost AI search rankings. This is particularly important for content that has already been performing well but needs a refresh to maintain its relevance.

Why this works:

• AI search engines prefer newer content, especially when it’s continually updated.
• By changing the publishing date, you signal to AI search engines that your content is fresh and up-to-date.

Pro AI Search Tip: Set a schedule to review and update older content regularly (every 3 to 6 months). In fact, did you know you can create a WordPress plugin to just do this for you automatically? But even without a plugin, just manually going in and making some simple edits (like making sure you don’t have old dates or dated advice) as well as updating the publish date can result in an AI search win. This simple SEO and AI search hack can keep your content ranking for a longer period of time.

5. Post Your Content Across Multiple Platforms to Increase Brand Mentions

AI search engines love brand mentions and the more your content is mentioned across multiple platforms across the web, the higher your chances of being cited. In fact, recent studies suggest that MORE brand mentions currently outweighs QUALITY of brand mentions. AI systems tend to favor brand signals from all over the web, including no-follow links. While these links don’t pass traditional SEO value, they still help increase your visibility in AI search results.

Here’s how you can increase brand mentions by posting your content on multiple platforms:

• Share your content on Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Post on platforms like Reddit or Quora if you can get quality mentions.
• Turn your written content into a YouTube video and embed it in your post for an extra boost.

Why this works:

• AI search engines favor content that has mentions across multiple platforms, as it helps reinforce the relevance and authority of your brand.
• No-follow links from social platforms now help AI search tools discover and cite your content

Not only that, if you search for a term on Google, you’ll see there are multiple areas of online real estate you can come up depending on where you’ve posted content. There’s the AI Overview, the SERP (blue links like in traditional Google search, where usually blogs come up), Long videos (YouTube), short videos (also YouTube), “What people are saying” (which primarily pulls from Reddit and Linkedin), etc. Putting your content in multiple formats and posting in multiple places allows you more chances to come up somewhere on that first page of Google.

Final Thoughts: How Do You Get Content to Rank in AI Search?

As AI search engines continue to dominate the digital landscape, getting your content to rank is no longer just about traditional SEO techniques. It’s about optimizing your content for AI tools that rely on structured answers, brand mentions, and unique insights.

By incorporating these five strategies into your content you can get your content to rank in AI search:

1. Add an answer box/key takeaways section at the top of your content.
2. Include FAQs at the bottom of main pages to address query fan-out.
3. Use branded insights and original data in the meat of your content.
4. Keep content fresh by updating publish dates every 3-6 months.
5. Share your content across multiple platforms to increase brand mentions.

As you follow these AI content optimization tips, you’ll significantly increase your chances of being cited, ranked, and found in AI search results.

Want to stay ahead of the game in the ever-evolving world of AI search optimization? Join our BKA Content Skool Community for access to expert advice, insider tips, and a premium membership that gives you direct access to our strategists and courses on SEO, AI search, and more.

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