Optimizing for AI Visibility: Key Insights from Our Webinar

Just a few years ago, online search was simple. You typed in a query, you got a list of blue links, and you clicked through to a website.

Today, that world is gone. Your potential clients are getting synthesized answers from Google Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI-driven answer platforms that have already decided which firms are worth mentioning before a user ever sees a search result. The question is: What, if anything, is your firm’s visibility strategy actually doing to influence that decision?

“The goal isn’t just appearing in AI search for the fun of it,” said Emily Andreas, Good2bSocial’s Assistant Director of SEO and AIO, during our recent webinar, AI Visibility Decoded: Tracking and Optimizing for Success. “It’s to appear where your audience actually is and to drive business success.”

Structure Your Pages for the Readers and Robots

Despite what you may have heard, SEO isn’t dead. Your content still needs to be structured, clearly written, and readable, not just for users and search engines, but also for LLMs that synthesize information from dozens of sources at once.

“File your content the way that you would think it would make sense as you’re reading it,” said Zach Laroche, Good2bSocial’s Director of SEO and AIO. “Make sure you’re setting up the hierarchy.”

Heading Hierarchy

LLMs read your pages the way crawlers do, hierarchically from top to bottom. Structure your pages in a way that makes that hierarchy clear: An H1 followed by H2S for your main sections, and H3S for subsections within those. But don’t overdo it. Too many H1S, or headings used inconsistently, make it harder for AI systems to understand what your page is actually about. And if they can’t understand it, they won’t cite it.

Metadata

Don’t neglect your meta titles and meta descriptions; both are critical to traditional SEO and AI visibility. In fact, Good2bsocial’s own testing revealed that firms using clear, consistent brand names in their metadata appear more prominently in AI responses, while those that don’t tend to fade into the background.

FAQs

Whether you’re looking to optimize a practice page, attorney bio, or even a blog, you can’t go wrong with an insightful set of FAQs. By providing direct answers to potential clients’ most pressing legal questions, you’re positioning your firm as THE go-to authority in your practice areas. For example, if you want the LLMs to cite your website when a user asks, “What is a trademark?”, including that exact question and answer in your FAQs makes the information easily accessible and understandable for both humans and the AI platforms they’re increasingly using to connect with legal assistance.

Scannable Content

When potential clients land on your website, most aren’t going to read every single word on a given page. They’re going to scan the content. Breaking up longer paragraphs, using clear subheadings, and adding bullet points when appropriate will make your content easier for humans to digest. The same goes for LLMs. Those elements act as guideposts for the algorithms, separating distinct ideas, minimizing ambiguity, and ultimately making it easier for the AI to parse, verify, and retrieve the information on the page.

Build Authority Signals Across the Web

Your website is the foundation of your online marketing efforts, but AI systems don’t evaluate your firm in isolation. They pull information from sources across the web, including:

• Online rankings and third-party directories: A listing in a directory such as Chambers or Best Lawyers sends an important credibility signal to LLMs. But if your firm’s recognitions only exist on sites like Chambers or Best Lawyers, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to amplify those signals. Feature it on your site too, and link back to the directory listing.
• Review platforms: Different LLMs pull from different sources. For example, ChatGPT has been observed drawing on Yelp and MapQuest, while Gemini relies on Google.
• Social media. Your firm’s presence on LinkedIn and other social platforms contributes to the broader digital footprint that LLMs draw from when forming answers.
• Video: Whether it lives on your website, YouTube, or your firm’s social profiles, video is one of the most powerful tools in your content arsenal, provided it’s accessible to both your human audience and the AI models. Always include a transcript or captions. LLMs can’t watch a video, but they can read its contents.

The bottom line? Firms with comprehensive digital footprints will earn the most mentions and citations. Every online reference to your practice or attorneys is an opportunity to reinforce your authority with LLMs.

Publish Citation-Worthy Content

Optimizing your existing pages will only take you so far. If you’re going to pull ahead, you need a sustained content strategy robust enough to earn citations over time.

Based on what the Good2bSocial team is seeing across clients, the models tend to favor thought leadership and insights, time-sensitive content, attorney bios, and practice area pages. But producing that content is only part of the equation.

“One of the takeaways that you can glean from looking at your citation data is to look at what’s being cited more frequently,” said Zach, “and from there, you can get a sense for what type of content the AI is looking for, and then produce more of that.”

Don’t overlook the importance of internal linking. If your insights pages are being cited by the LLMs, linking them to relevant practice area pages and attorney bios will give both your readers and AI models a clearer path through your site.

Take Your Visibility Strategy to the Next Level

Even in an era of AI-driven search, the fundamentals still matter. Well-structured content that answers your prospects’ questions and consistent authority signals across the web are the foundation of a robust visibility strategy.

Want to learn more? Check out more key insights from our webinar, or view the full on-demand recording.

Ready to take your firm’s visibility strategy to the next level? Schedule a free consultation to learn how our SEO/AIO team can help. Contact Good2bSocial today.