Using flowery language, taking your time to explain things, and coaxing the reader into a false sense of security before ripping the rug out from under them. These used to be standard best practices for writing, but then SEO changed that.
We shifted to answering the questions asked in the headings directly and cut out linguistic imagery for search engines. We knew in this era, people were mostly scanning for information, so creating content as if someone was hanging on your every word became nonsensical — will you not hang with me for old time’s sake, dear reader?
Now, we have AEO, the new hot bombshell entering the content villa. There has been a plethora of information churned out on God’s forgotten platform, LinkedIn, about the topic, which makes it difficult to decipher between what’s real and what’s cap (I’m still hip!).
So, how are content teams pivoting their strategy in this new era? How are LLMs changing the way brands are being surfaced? And most importantly, what can your content team do to ensure users find your riveting SaaS content?
We addressed all of these burning questions and more in our latest AEO webinar, which you can watch here.
Getting back to basics
One of my favorite things about AEO is that it is derailing an industry that oftentimes capitalizes on the weaknesses of search algorithms. We’ve seen it time and time again in SEO: Google releases an update, SEO experts find a weakness in the algorithm, those experts exploit that weakness, Google inevitably patches it with the next update, and the cycle starts over again.
But Google has always remained steadfast in its core values: You should be writing for humans.
I’ve always leaned on SEO as a helpful tool to ensure the content I write has a fighting chance to appear on Google’s “Hot or Not” list, but I don’t write for search engines, and I don’t write for LLMs either. What I ask myself before a piece of content gets published is:
- Is this helpful to the user?
- What value have I added to this piece of content that isn’t already in the SERP?
- If I were the user, would I like this content?
- If I were the user, what would I think of this page? This question embodies not just content but also UX and design principles that inadvertently affect SEO.
An example of this at Wrike was our blog’s “key takeaways” feature. For a while, we had the key takeaways in a question-and-answer format. When I asked myself some of the questions above, I found that this feature added more cognitive load for the user rather than improving their experience. We changed it to 3-4 short bullets instead, and not only did it improve the page’s look and feel, but it also increased our AEO visibility.
How users find your content via LLM
One of the fundamental differences between appearing in search rankings and in an LLM chat lies in how users interact with the platform. In search, the user types a word, phrase, or question, and the engine populates a list of answers related to that query.
In LLMs, however, users are having conversations. There’s no page two to fight your way off of. You’re either what the model reaches for, or you’re nowhere.
There are many tools that offer insights into how your brand might be seen in LLMs, but treat them more like samples rather than concrete metrics. No two outputs from LLMs are the same because no two users are the same. They have different account personalizations, chat histories, and ways they phrase queries. Therefore, these tools can offer us guesstimations, but not real insights into how and where our brand is being mentioned.
But what we do know is this: LLMs are surfacing information about your brand from a variety of sources. Including (but not limited to) indexed pages, deindexed pages, social media channels, YouTube, Reddit, press releases, customer review sites, old PDF files you’re ashamed of, and more. Basically, if it’s on the internet, it’s fair game.
As Vlastimil Cícha, Wrike’s SEO manager, and I put it in our AEO webinar: LLMs are finding information about your brand across different channels, not just search.
The biggest difference between SEO and AEO is that your AEO strategy needs to incorporate all your company’s platforms.
Building trust and authority in the AEO era
Building trust and authority? Come on Brandes, this isn’t new. EEAT has been around for eons. But in the AEO era people don’t want to see “this article has been reviewed by x,” the presumable expert in the field — they need more.
Users want firsthand experience, firsthand data, and the expertise that goes along with it. In 2026, people are also relying less on the brand or company itself for information, and more on the people behind the digital curtain. They are especially looking to community-driven, outside sources to learn about your brand.
It’s the same thing when you’re looking to see if that new blockbuster movie is worth the $12 ticket. You check Rotten Tomatoes. You check Reddit. You ask your friends what they thought of it. You’re gathering data about the movie from various sources, not by only watching the trailer to see if it’s good.
Your users are doing the same. As seen in our research above, review sites, Google, and analyst reports are being used more frequently to assess a company compared to the vendor websites.
In our AEO webinar, I suggested content teams do the following to build trust:
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- Gather data from all the corners of the internet where your brand is mentioned. Check Reddit, YouTube comments, G2 reviews, support tickets, and sales calls to find what your users need and what they are saying about your brand.
- Own your brand’s pitfalls and address your user’s pain points. There’s really no point in sweeping your brand’s shortcomings under the rug anymore, it’s all easily surfaced in a conversation with Chatty G or Claude. It’s much easier to find them, address them head on, then find ways to mitigate them.
- Focus on value over promotion. It just so happens that the brand you work for is ranking #1 for everything? Instead of over-promoting your brand, be the brand users associated with helpful, valuable information. Be realistic, your company isn’t #1 for everything, you’re not Smitty Werbenjägermanjensen.
The 5-step framework we use at Wrike
It can feel overwhelming trying to optimize for chats that have seemingly infinite outputs and the array of platforms users are on, but we’ve developed a five-step framework we use at Wrike to help us “cut through the noise” (sorry it’s my favorite cringe marketing phrase).
- Find your users and what they’re talking about. Look at prompts, SERPs, content gaps, and where your brand is mentioned across all social, community-driven, and review sites.
- Fix or create content based on what you found. Fixing up a crusty blog article might help you more than you think, because AEO is crawling everything, it sees that blog from 2016 even if you deindexed it.
- Format correctly. Turn strong topics into highly structured pages, videos, and social posts. Not everything needs to be a blog anymore, if your users are on TikTok, then creating native content there can have a bigger impact.
- Distribute everywhere. Widen your reach across LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and other active communities. If you created a piece of content, like say, a webinar, then maybe you write a blog about it (ooohhh), then clip the video for social content (aaahhh), and create LinkedIn posts (and the crowd goes wild!)
- Measure everything accordingly. We can’t just look at Google analytics or keywords anymore. Make sure to also track AI citations, bot visits, pipeline, and brand mentions.
What to take back to your team
AEO isn’t as intimidating as it seems. Yes, it’s blown the lid off of traditional SEO metrics and visibility, but the same concepts required to write good content for SEO are still deeply rooted in AEO. Your team should have already been focusing on EEAT, but now should branch out and go cross-platform.
Connect all your channels together from social and video to thought leadership. LLMs are combing through everything, so making sure your channels are well connected is essential.
Dear reader, if you are still here, I know you have what it takes to formulate a new content strategy for your team in the AEO era. But if you want, check out the full webinar on how to tailor your content strategy for AEO.
