AI search visibility is no longer a future SEO problem.
For a New Zealand food and export brand in the Mānuka honey space, we wanted to understand whether a more AI-aligned content strategy could improve visibility before the click.
The learning was clear: if a business wants to appear in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other LLM results, it needs to do more than rank for broad keywords.
It needs to answer real customer questions clearly, structure content in a way AI systems can understand, and build from topics where the brand already has authority.
What did we test?
We tested a traditional SEO approach against a more AI-aligned content strategy designed to appear in AI Overviews and other LLMs such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
The goal was not just to publish another blog article.
It was to create content that could answer a specific customer question, support stronger organic visibility, and give AI search engines enough clarity and structure to use the brand as part of the answer.
The strategy was built around three ideas:
- Answer the real questions customers are asking.
- Focus on topics where the brand already has authority.
- Structure the content so search engines and AI systems can understand and extract the answer easily.
Rather than writing a standard blog article, the content was built to be useful, clear and easy to summarise.
It included direct answers, comparison tables, bullet points, use cases, pros and cons, and clear recommendations.
Over a three-month year-on-year period, the content moved from page 3 to page 1 rankings for the target keywords.
The content was also included in AI Overview and other LLM results in both New Zealand and the United States.
One of the strongest signals came from AI-driven traffic behaviour. Visitors arriving from Perplexity spent 4x longer engaging with the website than the average visitor.
What drove the improvement?
The improvement came from building content around real buyer questions, not just search volume. The practical takeaway for business is simple: your best AI visibility opportunities may already be sitting inside your sales and enquiry process.
The strategy focused on comparison-led queries, clear answers, and topics where the brand already had authority. The content was then structured so AI tools could quickly understand the answer.
The questions customers ask before they buy should be fed back into your content strategy. Those questions reveal the concerns, comparisons and proof points your market actually cares about.
When your website answers those questions clearly, it gives both customers and AI search tools a stronger reason to trust your brand.
Key lessons
- AI search visibility starts with customer questions, not just keywords. Broad keywords still matter, but the more valuable opportunity often sits in the specific questions customers ask before they make a decision.
- Comparison content is a strong place to start.Queries like “X vs Y”, “best option for”, “is this worth it”, and “what is the difference between” often signal that a customer is actively evaluating their choices. These are the moments where brands can build trust before the customer reaches the website.
- Content needs to be structured for both people and search engines.
The takeaway
Ranking on page one is still valuable, but it is no longer the full picture.
Search is becoming more answer-led. Customers may form an opinion about a brand before they ever click through to the website.
For businesses, the opportunity is to become part of the answer.
That starts with listening to the questions customers already ask, then turning those questions into helpful, well-structured content that proves the business knows what it is talking about.
About the Author: Chris Clarke
