LLM SEO
LLM SEO is optimising content so large language models can find, understand and cite it. In practice: direct answers near the top of the page, consistent facts about your business across the web, and structured data machines can parse. The newest branch of search work, and the fastest growing.
Why it is a separate job
A search engine reads your page and decides where to rank it. A language model reads your page, along with a great many others, and decides what is true. The second job rewards different things.
Ranking rewards relevance to a query. Being cited rewards being quotable: a sentence that stands on its own, states one fact, and needs no surrounding context to make sense.
What to do about it
- Answer in the first paragraph. Put the plain answer above the background.
- Write self-contained sentences. A sentence that starts “As mentioned above” cannot be lifted.
- Keep your facts identical everywhere. Same description, same numbers, same service names on your site and every profile.
- Use structured data. It removes the guesswork about what the page is.
- Say something specific. Models summarise consensus; they cite specifics.
What not to bother with
Stuffing prompts, hidden text, or instructions addressed to the model in your page copy. Assistants do not follow instructions found in the documents they read, and pages built that way tend to read badly to people as well.