Table of Contents: The Two Meanings of AI SEO · What Stays the Same · What Actually Changes · The Measurement Problem · Where Phrasing Changes Everything · Should You Split Your Budget? · How to Future-Proof · FAQ
AI SEO and traditional SEO are terms often used interchangeably, but they’re not actually the same thing. While both focus on improving your visibility in search, the way they work, how success is measured, and what businesses need to prioritize can look quite different.
At its core, AI SEO is about earning visibility inside AI-generated answers, where the goal is to be mentioned and cited by platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. Traditional SEO, on the other hand, focuses on earning visibility in search engine results, where the goal is to rank well and drive clicks to your website.
I’ve been working in SEO in Toronto for over 15 years, and one thing I’ve noticed lately is how much confusion there is around the term “AI SEO.” It’s often used to describe two completely different things, so let’s clear up what we’re actually talking about.
When someone says they do AI SEO, they mean one of these:
The two get conflated because the same three letters appear in both, yet they are largely unrelated problems. You can be excellent at one and hopeless at the other, and I’ve seen agencies sell the first while clients believed they were buying the second.
With all the buzz around AI search, it’s easy to get the impression that everything we’ve learned about traditional SEO is suddenly outdated. The good news is, that’s not the case! In fact, many of the same strategies that help your website rank well in Google also play an important role in how your business shows up in AI-generated answers.
Think about it: AI search engines still need to be able to find, crawl, and understand your website. Your content still needs to be helpful, relevant, and answer the questions your audience is asking. Things like website speed, technical SEO, and a strong backlink profile still matter, too. Just like traditional SEO, building authority through mentions and references from other trusted websites can make a big difference.
Here’s what I always tell businesses: If you’ve already been investing in good SEO practices, you’re likely in a much better position for AI search than you might think.
When I audit websites that aren’t showing up in AI-generated answers, the issue often comes back to the same SEO problems we’ve been addressing for years. Maybe search engines are having trouble crawling certain pages, important content isn’t easily accessible because of how the website is built, or the business simply hasn’t established enough authority online.
These aren’t necessarily new problems created by AI. They’re familiar SEO challenges that now have an impact on another way potential customers discover your business.
While AI SEO and traditional SEO share many of the same foundations, there are some important differences in how they work and how we measure success. Let’s take a closer look at four of the biggest changes businesses should be aware of.
With traditional SEO, the goal has always been to rank as high as possible in search results and encourage people to click through to your website. Those clicks are relatively easy to track through tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
AI SEO works a little differently. Instead of focusing solely on rankings, you’re also trying to get your business mentioned, recommended, or cited in AI-generated answers.
For example, someone might ask ChatGPT to recommend an SEO consultant in Toronto, and your business could appear in the response. That person might remember your name, search for you later, or even contact you directly without ever clicking a link in the original answer.
The challenge? That visibility still has value, but it’s not always something you can easily measure through traditional analytics.
Creating helpful, high-quality content has always been important for SEO, and that hasn’t changed. However, with AI search, how you organize and present that information can make a difference.
AI search engines often pull information from different sources to put together a response. That means your content needs to be easy to understand, even when a particular section is taken out of the context of the full page.
For example, rather than opening a section with something vague like “This is why it matters,” it’s better to clearly identify the topic and provide a direct answer.
Using descriptive headings, answering common questions early in each section, and keeping your explanations clear and specific can all make it easier for AI platforms to understand and reference your content.
Backlinks and online authority have always played a major role in traditional SEO. But with AI search, it’s not just about getting other websites to link to yours.
AI platforms may also reference third-party sources when putting together answers, including industry publications, review websites, business directories, forums, and comparison articles.
For example, if your business is consistently mentioned in trusted industry publications or recommended in relevant discussions, those references can help establish your credibility and increase your opportunities to appear in AI-generated answers.
The big difference is that even mentions without a backlink can contribute to your AI search visibility. This makes building your brand’s reputation across the web more important than ever.
One of the biggest differences between traditional SEO and AI search is how people look for information.
With traditional search, someone might type a short keyword like “Toronto SEO consultant” into Google. But when using an AI platform, they might ask a much more detailed question, such as “Who are the best SEO consultants in Toronto for a small business looking to improve its Google rankings?”
AI search engines can break these longer questions into multiple searches, gather information from different sources, and put together a response based on what they find.
As a result, two people looking for essentially the same service might see completely different businesses recommended depending on how they phrase their questions.
This is why AI SEO isn’t just about targeting individual keywords. It’s also about understanding the different ways your potential customers ask questions and making sure your content addresses those needs.
One of the biggest challenges with AI SEO is figuring out how to measure whether your efforts are actually working.
With traditional SEO, we have tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track keyword rankings, organic traffic, and how people interact with your website. But AI search introduces a whole new challenge: your business could be appearing in AI-generated answers without that visibility ever showing up in your website analytics.
Think about it. Someone could ask ChatGPT for a recommendation, see your business mentioned, and decide to look you up later. Unless they click directly through to your website from that response, it can be difficult to connect that interaction back to AI search.
So, how do you actually measure AI search visibility?
The answer is to start tracking how often your business appears in AI-generated responses. This means identifying the questions your potential customers are asking, testing those questions across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI search features, and monitoring which businesses are being mentioned or cited.
From my experience working with clients, there are two important things to keep in mind:
Google’s AI performance reporting in Search Console is also beginning to address some of these measurement challenges. While that’s a step in the right direction, businesses still need to look beyond Google to understand how they’re performing across different AI search platforms.
Here’s something interesting we’ve noticed through our own research: the way someone phrases a question can have a major impact on which businesses appear in AI-generated answers.
To explore this, we ran an experiment using our own brand and one of our clients. We took the same search intent and tested it three different ways:
We then tracked the results across major AI search platforms to see how the recommendations changed, and the results were pretty interesting!
One Toronto retailer we tested performed well for short keyword searches but dropped to zero top-three visibility when we tested longer, research-style prompts about the same purchase.
We also found that the most effective question format wasn’t consistent across industries. In other words, simply telling businesses to focus on conversational keywords isn’t necessarily the right approach for everyone.
So, what does this mean for your SEO strategy?
It means you need to think beyond individual keywords and consider the different ways potential customers might search for your products or services. Someone looking for a quick answer may phrase their question very differently from someone who’s actively comparing businesses before making a purchase. And if you’re only tracking one type of query, you could be missing some pretty significant gaps in your AI search visibility.
This is a question I expect more businesses will be asking as AI search continues to grow. And my answer is generally no.
As we’ve discussed, AI SEO and traditional SEO share many of the same foundations. Improving your website’s technical performance, creating helpful content, and building authority through quality backlinks and third-party mentions can all support your visibility in both traditional and AI search results.
So, rather than treating AI SEO as a completely separate service with its own strategy and budget, I’d recommend incorporating it into your existing SEO efforts.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in AI-specific optimization. There are a few areas where additional time and resources can make a difference, particularly:
The goal isn’t to duplicate your SEO efforts or start from scratch. It’s to build on what’s already working while adapting your strategy to account for the ways people are discovering businesses through AI.
With AI search evolving so quickly, it’s understandable that businesses want to know what they should be doing now to stay competitive in the years ahead.
My advice? Don’t get too caught up in trying to optimize for every new AI platform or algorithm update. Instead, focus on building a strong SEO foundation that can support your visibility across different search experiences.
That means making sure your website is technically sound, creating content that genuinely answers your customers’ questions, and continuing to build your authority online.
More specifically, I’d recommend focusing on a few key areas:
The good news is that you don’t have to completely rethink your SEO strategy to prepare for AI search. Many of the things that have always made a website successful in traditional search are still incredibly valuable today.
The difference is that we now need to think a little more broadly about where customers are finding information and how businesses can earn visibility beyond the traditional search results page.
If you’re not sure how your business is currently performing, an AI search audit can help you understand where you’re appearing in AI-generated answers and where there may be opportunities to improve. A technical SEO review can also help identify any underlying website issues that may be affecting your visibility.
Yes! While AI SEO and traditional SEO share many of the same foundations, the biggest difference comes down to how your business gets discovered. Traditional SEO focuses on helping your website rank higher in search results and attracting clicks. AI SEO, on the other hand, is about getting your business mentioned, recommended, or cited in AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. Both help you reach potential customers, just in different ways.
Not at all! Traditional SEO is still incredibly important, and many of the strategies that help your website rank on Google also support your visibility in AI search. Things like high-quality content, a technically sound website, and strong backlinks aren’t going anywhere. The difference is that businesses now have another opportunity to get discovered, and rankings and website traffic aren’t the only metrics worth paying attention to. In fact, if you’ve already been investing in good SEO, you’re likely in a stronger position for AI search than you might think.
AI is changing both how people search and how businesses need to approach their SEO strategies. Instead of only focusing on ranking for specific keywords, businesses also need to think about the questions their customers are asking and whether their content provides clear, useful answers. Building authority through third-party mentions and tracking how often your business appears in AI-generated responses are also becoming increasingly important. Clear headings and direct answers matter more, too, because AI platforms often quote a single section on its own.
Not necessarily! In fact, I’d recommend building AI search optimization into your existing SEO strategy rather than treating it as something completely separate. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, so you don’t need to start from scratch or duplicate your efforts. Instead, focus on strengthening your existing SEO foundations while adding things like AI visibility tracking, content that answers specific customer questions, and opportunities to earn mentions from trusted third-party sources.
The best place to start is by focusing on the fundamentals of good SEO. Make sure your website is easy for search engines to crawl, create helpful content that answers your customers’ questions, and continue building your authority through quality backlinks and trusted industry mentions. From there, start monitoring how your business appears in AI-generated answers so you can identify gaps and adjust your strategy as search continues to evolve.
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