SEO now occupies an uneasy position inside many organizations. Leadership is pushing for visibility within AI-powered search experiences. Product teams want insight into which stories, features, and use cases are being highlighted. Sales still relies on a healthy pipeline. At the same time, classic metrics like rankings, traffic, and conversions remain important. What’s different is the search landscape itself. Content is increasingly summarized, excerpted, and referenced in interfaces where clicks are optional and attribution is inconsistent. When a generative AI summary appears on the SERP, users click on standard organic results only about 8% of the time. Because of this, SEO teams need a more explicit strategy for earning presence inside generative answers, not just in the links surrounding them.
This 90-day action plan breaks down how to do that through a phased, week-by-week rollout, with practical tweaks based on the site’s primary business role.
Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1–2)
Define your “AI search topics”
Keywords still play a role, but AI systems primarily structure information around entities, themes, and questions rather than simple query strings. Your first move is to determine which ideas and topics you want AI tools to consistently connect with your brand.
Action steps
- Choose 5–10 core topics you want to be recognized for.
- For each topic, map:
- The most common questions users ask
- The comparisons they consider
- “Best,” “how,” and “why” queries that signal evaluation and decision intent
Example:
Topic: AI SEO tools
Mapped query types:
Core questions: What are the best AI SEO tools? How does AI improve SEO?
Comparisons: AI SEO tools vs traditional SEO tools.
Intent signals: Best AI SEO tools for content optimization.…