2026 is the year SEO grows up. Google AI Overviews sits on top of the blue links, ChatGPT and Perplexity answer questions directly, and Claude and Gemini are growing fast. If you only chase rankings, you miss half the traffic. The good news: SEO fundamentals are still fundamentals, only the way content is cited has expanded.
1. Write answers, not articles
AI models cite passages, not pages. Start every section with a 40–60-word direct answer before adding nuance. It's called "answer-first writing" and it's exactly what Perplexity and ChatGPT are trained on.
2. Add LLMs.txt to your site
An llms.txt file is for AI crawlers what sitemap.xml is for Google. It tells LLMs which pages matter and in what order to read them. Place it at /llms.txt and a full version at /llms-full.txt.
3. Make Schema.org markup the default
Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList and WebPage aren't optional anymore. AI Overviews leans heavily on structured data to assemble answers. No schema = no citation.
4. Build entity authority, not keyword authority
Google increasingly treats your brand as an entity with attributes, not a stack of pages. Work on Wikipedia mentions (where possible), structured About pages, consistent brand name use on review sites, and internal links that connect your brand to core concepts.
5. Optimise for INP, not LCP
Largest Contentful Paint is a solved problem for most modern sites. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is the new bottleneck. Lazy-loading scripts, less client-side JavaScript and server rendering help the most.
6. Create original data, not summaries
A restated statistic that's available everywhere has 0% citation value. Your own research, a unique benchmark or an anonymised case study gives LLMs something they can't find elsewhere, that's the passages that get cited.
7. Question formats win impressions
FAQ blocks, "What is X?" headings and H3s phrased as search questions are picked disproportionately often by AI Overviews and featured snippets. Add an FAQ section to every important page, not just the homepage.
8. Internal linking as a knowledge graph
Treat your site as a directed graph. Hub pages (service pages) receive links from relevant spoke pages (blogs, case studies). Avoid 200-link footers and navigations, they dilute the signal.
9. Make author E-E-A-T visible
Google's E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) has carried more weight since the December 2025 core update. Show author names, bios with credentials, and dated "last updated" stamps under every article.
10. Measure AI mentions, not just rankings
Run a monthly AI monitoring round: ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini what they say about your brand and industry. Track whether you're cited. Tools like Profound, Otterly and Peec.ai automate this.
Where to start?
Start with the basics: schema markup, LLMs.txt, and restructure your top-5 pages following the answer-first principle. The rest comes after. Not everything at once, foundation first.