1. Introduction: SEO Is No Longer Just About Ranking
I’ve run SEO and SEM across completely different sectors—SOFTSWISS in iGaming, CoinsPaid in crypto, and Studio57 in creative services—and each demanded its own rules of the game. Crypto was about speed, transparency, and education. iGaming needed long-form trust-building around regulation and authority. Creative? All about tone, visuals, and a sense of personality that doesn’t feel manufactured.
This mattered before. But it’s now critical because search isn’t static anymore.
We’re not just fighting for a blue link. We’re fighting to be summarized, cited, or embedded into AI Overviews—Google’s SGE, Bing’s Copilot, Perplexity. That means SEO is no longer about just “ranking.” It’s about becoming the brand or source that AI trusts enough to reference.
“You can rank #1 and still get ignored in AI search. The question is—does the AI trust you?” — Lily Ray, SEO Director at Amsive Digital (BrightonSEO 2024)
I’ve seen the shift firsthand: clicks dropping despite high impressions, summaries pulling text but skipping attribution, AI answers that use your content but cite no one. If you’re still optimizing for CTR alone, you’re not playing the current game.
2. Why Dev Companies Struggle with Visibility—Even with a Great Product
The problem isn’t always the product. It’s often the story around it—or the lack thereof.
You’ve probably seen it: a well-designed API platform, solid documentation, a GitHub badge, and an active changelog… but zero visibility unless you search the brand name directly. The homepage is titled “Home.” The blog is empty or full of generic listicles. No one’s linking in, and nothing answers real developer queries. Meanwhile, a rival with a similar feature set dominates AI-generated summaries and top organic results. Why?
Because too many dev companies assume good engineering speaks for itself. But in modern search—especially with AI in the loop—clarity beats cleverness, and visibility beats elegance. If your product isn’t clearly framed around real-world use cases, if your docs don’t get surfaced through smart linking, and if your blog isn’t connected to a broader semantic web of trust—you’re invisible.
“You can’t optimize for AI summaries if your content doesn’t exist in the right context. Structured clarity is the new currency.”
— Bernard Huang, Co-founder of Clearscope
The challenge? Most technical teams don’t think in terms of “semantic context” or “SERP landscape.” And many marketing teams don’t speak code. That gap kills discoverability, especially in AI-driven search, where structured trust signals matter more than keyword stuffing ever did.
3. The Rise of Semantic Reputation: It’s Not Just About Links Anymore
We used to chase backlinks like gold—get enough of them, and your page climbed. But AI-driven search engines have changed the rules. Now it’s not just how many sites link to you, but who does it and in what context. You might have a spotless backlink profile and still stay invisible if the algorithm doesn’t recognize you as part of the conversation.
With one devtool client, I watched us get outranked—not by a better product, but by one that was being discussed more naturally on GitHub and Stack Overflow. Their SEO wasn’t stronger; their community presence was. And that changed everything.
“Topical authority is replacing link authority. Mentions on Reddit or Hacker News can now carry more weight than a bunch of legacy backlinks.”
— Kevin Indig, SEO & Growth Advisor
That’s the shift: AI wants sources that feel embedded in the topic. If you’re not showing up in developer docs, forums, or how-to content beyond your own blog, your credibility won’t register—no matter how polished your site is.
4. Metrics That Actually Matter Now
For years, I was laser-focused on rankings and CTR. That’s what clients expect to see in reports. But in the last 12–18 months, I’ve seen top positions bring zero actual impact—because AI search is changing the rules.
A page can rank #2 and still be skipped in an SGE box. I’ve had content pulled into AI-generated summaries without any attribution, and no traffic to show for it. Meanwhile, another piece—never ranking above #6—was mentioned in an AI response and triggered a wave of branded searches within days.
Now, I ask a different set of questions: Are we being summarized? Do we show up in AI assistants when users search conversationally? Are we becoming part of the answer, even if no one clicks?
That shift—from “visibility” to “influence”—is what every SEO team needs to start tracking.
5. How to Earn a Spot in AI Answers
You don’t just “optimize” your way into AI Overviews—you earn it. The bots are trained on patterns of trust. That includes citations from respected domains, consistency in messaging, and clear signals of expertise.
In one case, we rewrote a fintech help center article with actual product screenshots, clearer FAQs, and quotes from internal experts. It jumped from nowhere to being quoted (verbatim!) in Perplexity and Gemini. Why? Because it answered the user’s question better than any generic blog post.
Technical formatting matters too. Use author schema. Structure your headers like answers. Add relevant citations. I’ve tested articles with and without these layers—and the ones with stronger structure and source signals were the only ones summarized.
It’s not about ranking first. It’s about being the one the model chooses when it builds the answer.
6. Visibility ≠ Trust: Why Structured Content Still Wins
I’ve worked with plenty of dev companies that ranked well on Google, but kept getting skipped in AI summaries. Same content. Same topic. But they lacked what AI models are trained to look for: clear signals of authority.
What often gets overlooked? Author credibility, consistent topical depth, and a layout that actually helps LLMs extract structured information. It’s not just about writing well — it’s about being indexable in the right way.
We started adjusting by making authorship explicit, tying posts to real experts with bios, linking to original research, and clarifying sources. That simple shift started landing our content in AI answers—especially when paired with niche authority.
You can play the ranking game and still lose the trust game. In the AI-driven SERP, those are no longer the same thing.
7. The Rise of Fragmented Search Paths
Classic funnels are dead. Users don’t “search → click → convert” anymore—they bounce between ChatGPT, LinkedIn threads, GitHub issues, Reddit, and maybe… your site. Sometimes, they never even make it to your domain. And yet, they’re making buying decisions faster than ever.
I’ve seen B2B buyers ask Gemini for tool suggestions, click on a Reddit link, then sign up for a trial—all without Googling a single branded query. In that world, your influence depends less on domain visibility, and more on distributed presence—being cited, quoted, or mentioned across platforms the AI considers reliable.
“Generative search is trained on content from dozens of surfaces—if you’re not embedded across them, you’re not even in the running.”
— Tom Critchlow, SEO Consultant & Strategy Advisor
This is why technical marketers need to think like PR teams: seed expertise where real users ask real questions. Stack Overflow, podcast transcripts, docs, GitHub READMEs—all of it feeds the models.
8. Redefining SEO Metrics in an AI-Summarized World
A while back, I noticed something odd. A blog I’d optimized hit the top spot for a competitive query—but traffic barely moved. We dug in and saw the page getting picked up in AI answers. The content was helping users, but they weren’t clicking anymore. Why would they? The summary gave it all away.
That’s when it clicked: the old playbook—rank, get clicks, convert—isn’t enough.
Now, I look beyond traffic. I ask: is this content showing up in Overviews? Are we being cited—or just scraped? I’ve started using SparkToro to see where our influence shows up, and AlsoAsked to shape how we frame answers.
“AI systems are forming answers from what they think matters—not necessarily who ranked first.”
— Cyrus Shepard, Founder at Zyppy
SEO isn’t dead. But “rankings” are no longer the best way to measure it.
9. Final Thoughts: Adapt or Fade
SEO used to be a channel. Now it’s infrastructure.
It’s the layer connecting your brand to AI, to users, to decision-makers who’ll never visit your homepage. If your site isn’t being understood—and trusted—by search engines as a source, then all the pretty design and clever copy won’t save you.
This shift doesn’t mean throwing out everything we’ve learned. It means knowing when to switch gears. When to optimize for humans, when to feed the machines, and when to bridge both.
“Don’t ask, ‘How do I rank?’ Ask, ‘Would a machine quote me if I disappeared?’”
— Bernard Huang, Co-founder of Clearscope
And if you’re a marketer working with developers, start listening like an engineer and writing like a journalist. That’s where the next generation of visibility will come from.
