Want More Visibility in AI Search? Focus on Brand Authority, Not Just Keywords
The Key Points
- Citations are in; clicks are out
- Brand authority and credibility are instrumental to your SEO strategy
- The shift is on from page-focused optimization to entity management
Think for a moment about a few products you absolutely love. Maybe it’s a pair of shoes you’ve sworn by for years, a car brand you’re loyal to, or — even more specific — a particular pen that feels “just right.”
For me, it's hyper-specific: the Office Depot Brand retractable ballpoint pen with grip, Medium Point, 1 mm, Black Barrel, Black Ink. I don’t just buy this pen — I trust it. I know exactly what I’m getting. And while plenty of companies sell nearly identical pens, in my mind, Office Depot is the authority for this exact model.
That’s what brand authority looks like: familiarity, trust, and enough positive experiences that you instinctively rely on one brand over another.
It’s also the foundation of how search engines and AI tools decide what content to surface— and which brands to cite — today.
From Search Engine to Answer Engine
If you think back to early Google, it was a simple list of blue links. Ranking was mostly about keywords and matching the wording of the query. If you had the right terms on the page, you had a shot.
That era is gone.
With AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, Google and other platforms no longer simply list links, they answer questions. Users click through less and see AI-summarized content more.
Today’s reality is that your brand or product doesn’t just need to rank in a search result, it needs to be referenced. Being the link that gets clicked is no longer the goal, being the source that gets cited is.
Google and AI engines reward content that follow the E-E-A-T framework: Experience Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. If your brand sites have focused on demonstrating experience and expertise in the past, that’s great. But today, authority and trustworthiness are the qualities that determine whether your brand or products are visible in AI-driven environments.
Recognition + Trust = Authority
For brand and product marketers, authoritativeness isn’t just about who has the most products or content on their website; it’s about whether your brand is recognized and trusted across the entire digital ecosystem.
Authority is built through a combination of reputation signals that tell both search engines and AI tools this brand knows what it’s talking about, it delivers on what it claims, and those claims are validated by others.
Ask yourself the following:
- Is my brand known and identifiable in our product category? Can customers, trade journalists, and AI tools explain what we do?
- Is your website referenced by reputable industry sources? Do industry associations and partners link to you? Do media brands consider you in their coverage?
- Are your spokespeople and subject matter experts visibly credible? Do your product managers, engineers, or executives appear in places your customers trust?
When search engines and AI tools are evaluating your digital footprint, these are the signals they’re evaluating. They’re looking beyond a single landing page and at your brand as a whole.
What’s changed for product marketers
The old way of doing things:
- Optimizing individual landing pages
- Target specific keywords
- Build backlinks through PR and partnerships
The new way of doing things:
- Optimize your entire brand ecosystem, not just your website
- Prioritize credibility signals across every customer touchpoint
- Build reputation equity across platforms, media, and AI tools
This shift means SEO isn’t just a channel tactic anymore; it’s a core part of your brand strategy. Your product pages, your corporate site, your social channels, thought-leadership content, YouTube demos, documentation hubs—even your executive leadership’s social profiles—all feed into how AI tools understand and evaluate your brand.
How Marketers can Optimize for Brand Authority
You’ll want to think entities, not pages. Think of your brand as a family, and each element is a person within that family. While pages can certainly stand alone and independent of one another, they’re much stronger as a family. You now want to focus on building a strong and cohesive brand entity.
Consider the following:
- Do your product pages, website, social profiles, support documents, sales materials, and videos feel like one unified brand?
- Does your About page clearly articulate your brand’s mission, value proposition and your credibility?
- Do your subject matter experts, spokespeople, and product leaders show their visible expertise on platforms like LinkedIn, at events, on podcasts or in other forms of thought-leadership content?
Reputation signals are today’s word of mouth
In this new era of AI-powered search, your brand’s reputation is built through digital signals that indicate trust, expertise, and recognition. These signals are the modern-day version of a customer saying, “this company knows what it’s doing.”
Reputation signals you’ll want to look for include:
- Backlinks and mentions from respected industry sites
- Inclusion in industry round-ups and comparison guides
- End-users referencing your product or brand
- Other brands or product manufacturers citing you in their own content
Posting about your own brand or products is great. It’s even better when people outside of your organization do it. External validation is one of the strongest authority signals you can have. The stronger your reputation, the more likely your brand is to appear – and be cited – in AI-powered answers.
Like what you're reading? Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter here!
About the Author
Erin Hallstrom
Contributor
Erin Hallstrom is the Director of Content Operations and Visibility for EndeavorB2B, where she works with more than 150 trade journalists across 90+ brands to implement search engine optimization (SEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO) best practices. She’s been a featured speaker at the News and Editorial SEO Summit (NESS) and headlines ASBPE’s SEO for B2B Media Playbook education series.
In addition to optimization strategy, Erin is responsible for Endeavor's metrics reporting, where she uses her expertise in website analytics to help teams understand their data to make informed content decisions. Erin holds multiple technical certifications in Google Analytics and also trains audience and marketing groups how best to utilize SEO and GEO tactics for enhanced content marketing performance.
Resources
Quiz
Your Competitive Edge, DeliveredElevate your strategy with weekly insights from marketing leaders who are redefining engagement and growth. From campaign best practices to creative innovation and data-driven trends, MarketingEDGE delivers the ideas and inspiration you need to outperform your competition.
