In the Back to the Future II, Marty, Jennifer, and Doc are flung into a futuristic reality with flying cars and self-adjusting clothes. When 2015 actually hit, we didn’t have most of that, but we did have smartphones and movie-streaming services. That’s pretty cool, but vastly different.
The point is: the future always looks different than we expect.
The same goes for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Major events like Google’s appearance on the search scene in 2000, the start of local SEO in 2006 with Google Maps, and the rise of social SEO have molded best practices today. SEO has gone through its rebellious adolescent keyword-stuffing phase and the maturation to a mobile-first mindset.
Now, we are witnessing the emergence of Search AI Optimization (SAIO) – AKA Generative AI Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI Optimization (AIO). SAIO is a companion strategy to SEO that helps your website be a cited source for GenAI search responses, what we call the “SAIRP” Search AI Response Page.
Hot Tip: If you’re running into a phrase for the first time, we’ve added links to our SAIO Glossary in this blog to help!
Here is how SEO content is adapting to GenAI search through SAIO.
Conversation-Focused Content
SEO content strategy has grown in complexity and depth throughout the years. Simply mentioning a keyword in the body content, titles, and tags hasn’t been enough for a while. It needs to be supported by EEAT principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Meaning: you need to make your content unique and valuable. Using AI to regurgitate facts and figures will endow your site with a facade of expertise, but is it trustworthy? Does it have human experience intertwined with it? All these add together to create the authority of your site.
With SAIO in the picture, content not only follows the EEAT principles, but it needs to be conversational. The goal is to serve answers to your audience’s GenAI conversations (searches) on a gleaming platter. If people are asking GenAI: “How can I make my fried chicken crispier?”, a post with that question and the corresponding answer could be easily cited as a source.
How Are People Searching with GenAI?
When using traditional search, we put in a just-specific-enough search query to get our answer, but not overwhelm the search engine.
Traditional search example: If you are planning a trip, it would be unlikely that you would search: “flights to Puerto Rico for 2 adults and 2 kids on August 6, 2025. Include 2 window seats. I’m not a fan of Airlines A and B. Keep all seats in 2 aisles”. All this is a bit too much for a traditional search engine, so we keep it simple and we add information iteratively. You might start by searching “flights to Puerto Rico on August 6.”
GenAI prompting is a science in itself and it needs to be learned. The natural and first way to adapt to a conversational search engine is to pose a question. The second is to give a more detailed prompt.
GenAI search prompt example: When you need AI to help your child write an essay, you may prompt: “What are ways to improve writing skills?” Or, if you are more familiar with GenAI, you may prompt: “Give me 10 tips and examples of ways to improve writing skills explained in a way a 5th grader can understand.”
How Are People Searching For Your Brand/Topic on GenAI Platforms?
Well, this depends on your audience. Think logically. How would they find you if they were having a conversation with GenAI?
Example: If you sell vacuums, they might ask the chatbot “What are the best ways to clean a 2-story house with 5 dogs?” You could then write a blog post on efficient ways to clean up after dogs at home to align with that prompt. (We’ll get to how you can do that below.)
Have a few conversations with GenAI yourself. You could even ask “What are some popular questions about [insert topic of expertise]?” In this example, I asked a GenAI platform: “Could you give me popular questions people ask about cleaning after dogs indoors?” From there it gave me a list of questions that I could answer in a SAIO page….
How to Set Up Your Website with SAIO Content
An FAQ framework is a great way to start with SAIO. You would write a blog or page in a way that your audience may ask questions.
FAQ Outline Example:
Title: The best ways to clean up after dogs at home
- What’s the most effective way to remove dog hair from furniture and carpet?
- What’s the best way to eliminate dog odor from my home?
- How do I remove pet urine stains from carpet?
- How do I clean and disinfect hard floors after an accident?
- What cleaning tools are powerful enough for dog hair?
All these questions could be asked in a conversation with a GenAI platform like Perplexity or Bing Copilot. If you write a blog answering the questions, your website could be cited as a source to prompts pertaining to your expertise/brand.
Other content formats that work for SAIO include:
- How-tos with step-by-step instructions
- Q & A interviews
- Longer form white papers or blogs split into distinct sections with topic headers
- Listicles or other ranked/sorted information
The Goal of SAIO & SEO
… is to make it super easy for GenAI bots and search engines to cite/rank your content.
SAIO is the next step on the SEO journey to make your website stand out in an oversaturated digital world. Are you ready to take it?
