From Search to Strategy: How AI is Rewriting the SEO Playbook

The Prompt is the New Search Bar for All Brands

Gen Z is asking ChatGPT for skincare advice in Target aisles. Prime Day saw a 3,300% surge in generative AI referrals. 

This new trend is already going beyond the skincare aisle and into the future of all marketing. As consumers hand over the decision-making process to chatbots, B2B buyers are quietly doing the same. Instead of Googling, they’re prompting. Instead of combing through landing pages, they’re skimming AI-generated comparisons. In this new landscape, brands have to be optimized for answers, not just optimized for algorithms. 

In financial services and fintech, CMOs, asset managers, and fintech product leads are increasingly using AI to shortcut due diligence, compare providers, and summarize capabilities. Whether it's a wealthtech startup looking for the best white-label solution or an insurance platform seeking a new data partner, their research often starts with a prompt. You now have to factor AI search into your content strategies to appear in the discovery process. 

Search Behavior Has Changed. Strategy Needs to Follow.

We’ve entered an era where content isn’t just competing for clicks. It’s competing for citations. In this era, AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity become trusted guides. That’s why brands like Cetaphil have rewritten product descriptions to be LLM-readable and referenced by AI search assistants.

And Cetaphil didn’t stop there. They scrubbed their retail product listings and websites to prioritize clinical credibility and tightly structured language. They even launched a chatbot, GAIA, to help TikTok creators on TikTok livestreams, offering product information, tips and clinical advice. Their social content, like the absurdist AI-generated character "Cremina Ballerina," is weird, fun, and intentionally optimized to get people (and algorithms) talking.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they’re using tools like Eldil AI and BrandMentions to track how their brand is being described by large language models. This is AEO in action: when Cetaphil is actually intentionally shaping the conversation.

What is the difference between AEO and SEO?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the discipline of showing up in AI-generated answers. It’s not just about clicks. It’s about being cited, ranked, and repeated by tools your buyers now trust.

Unlike SEO, AEO isn’t driven by keywords alone. It’s driven by:

• Machine-legible structure
• Clear, authoritative language
• Embedded trust signals from earned media, analyst reports, and social proof

Marketers should ask: would a language model recognize this as credible, relevant, and worth quoting? If not, it’s time for a refresh.

AI Is Your Buyer’s First Assistant

Today’s enterprise buyer is overwhelmed, skeptical, and operating on speed. They’re not reading your 40-page whitepaper. They’re asking ChatGPT for a shortlist. They’re summarizing your analyst profile in Perplexity. They’re extracting key differences between you and your competitor using a custom GPT.

This behavior mirrors what Adobe found during Prime Day. Buyers are getting comfortable outsourcing micro-decisions to AI. In B2B, that’s not just content consumption. It’s vendor research. Are you training the AI to say the right thing about you?

Designing for Discovery, Decision, and Justification

Your presence in the AI layer is only one piece. Brands must coordinate across the full journey.

Discovery

You’ll want to appear in AI-generated lists, summaries, and comparisons when users are looking for quick answers. Easier said than done, right? But here are a few places to start:

• Make sure your site is easily crawlable, with your sitemap available in your robots.txt file
• Add an llsm.txt file to your site, with a clear company description and key links, to easily surface your site details to LLMs
• List your site on relevant reference sites, like G2, Clutch, Capterra, etc
• Investigate starting a content series where you compare your offerings to your competitors

Decision

Paid search, SEO, and on-page messaging that reinforces value have been key components of ranking strategies for years, and they’re still important in the world of AI. 

It’s been confirmed that Google ads can appear in AI Overview results, given the right intent and query combination. So a paid search strategy that capitalizes on bottom-funnel interest, with keywords that mimic common buyer searches, can still be impactful.

Likewise, regular SEO tactics that help your pages rank (i.e. good usability, keyword usage, content richness) will help them be cited when users turn to AI to help them make decisions. 

Justification

Analyst validation, customer testimonials, and thought leadership can help convince prospects, and AI, of your value. Are the parts of your website that justify your product or service’s value props easy to get to? 

• Centralized testimonial or case study hub
• Blog or resource center, with frequent publications
• Reliable pricing or specs information - either on your site or on listing sites
• Plenty of internal links to your blogs or resources

Cetaphil’s strategy is a system-wide shift. For B2B marketers, this could look like unifying content strategy, PR, SEO, and brand voice to create a consistent footprint in AI-led discovery.

Train the Algorithm Like You Train Your Team

Audit your content with tools like Eldil AI and BrandMentions. Then edit your content based on output. Teach the algorithm what to say.

What this looks like:

• Clear, structured summaries on product and solution pages
• Referenced language that matches what prospects are asking AI
• Distributed thought leadership that fuels trust in both people and machines

Not sure what prompts people are using in AI? New tools are popping up all the time for prompt analysis, but an easy place to start is Google’s “People also ask” section. Google your top queries, scroll down the page a little, and take note of what kinds of questions people type into Google. Start incorporating that language or phrasings into your pages, or better yet, create an FAQ page that answers those questions directly.

You have to treat AI like an entry-level employee. They are likely capable of high-impact work, but only if you train them well.

Be Favorable (not just findable).

It’s time to go beyond page rank. The brands that win will go beyond being searchable, and instead will be strategic participants in the buyer’s AI-powered journey. They will be the answer when a buyer asks a question.

At Ricciardi Group, we help B2B brands navigate this new era of AI marketing with clarity and creativity. When the prompt is the new search bar, being quotable is more powerful than being clickable.

—

Read more within our AI Guide for B2B Marketers.