What NOT to do when optimising your content for AI search visibility

Ask ChatGPT | Perplexity | Claude | Google AI Mode to summarise and analyse this (long-ish…) post.

TL;DR: The fastest way to stay invisible in AI search is to treat it like SEO. Keyword soup, generic copy, and unstructured pages won’t get you quoted. AI wants clarity, authority, and personality, backed by schemas, FAQs, author bios, and brand signals outside your site. Fix these mistakes, and you turn AI from ignoring you to mentioning your brand in its answers.

AI tools have a lot of choices when it comes to the sources they reference and brands they mention in their answers. About 200 million websites… And they’re already reshaping how people find information. In fact, 13.14% of all Google searches triggered an AI Overview in March 2025, up from just 6.49% in January.

That means more and more customer journeys are starting (and ending) inside AI-written answers. They have the power to be picky, and they won’t quote you just because you have an online presence. You have to find your way to the top of the pile first. 

Being one of the top brands in your industry that AI likes to mention is a pretty sweet spot. 

More and more, we’re turning to LLMs and AI tools for answers. ChatGPT and Gemini have the power to introduce new customers to your brand through quoting you in conceptual answers and name-dropping you when asked for recommendations. 

But you have to learn how to play the AI game first, and a lot of brands are getting it wrong… Check how you’re currently faring in AI mentions by getting an AI Brand Visibility Score. 

Here’s why you might not be getting as much love from AI as you would like!

AI search optimisation mistakes that will stop your brand from getting mentioned

If you write your content like this, you’re basically waving a big red flag in AI's eyes, and you’re unlikely to get quotes and mentions from this market-changing search tool. 

Relying (solely) on SEO tactics

We can’t write content like it’s 2013 anymore. Remember the good old days when simply maintaining a blog was enough to get awareness and traffic. *sighs in nostalgia*

Most of the SEO tactics we use today won’t catch the attention of AI either. The way traditional search engines like Google work is quite different from the processes of AI assistants. 

Google collates a list of relevant webpages where you can find the answer. AI finds information and rewrites it to answer the question itself. 

So a load of keywords isn’t very helpful for AI. It needs to clearly understand the concept and be able to quickly paraphrase it in an answer. 

Think, you’re not writing for ranks. You’re writing for quotes. 

Lacking structure

For customer experience, a block of text is an immediate turn-off and click away. Instead, structuring your content with subheadings and bullet points makes it much more inviting and skimmable. 

That’s what AI is looking for, too. 

When you clearly structure your content, AI can easily interpret it and summarise it into quotes to form its answer. It’s like giving AI a map of your content so it knows how to find what it’s looking for. And you’ll win a treasure trove of AI mentions. I show you how to nail this in our guide to writing for AI search. 

Schemas are a big help here. It gives AI bots information on what they are reading, like FAQs, product details, and author bios. Everything they need to get what you’re about and use that in their answers. 

Writing generic content

Why you? It’s a question you have to answer for your customers, and now AI too. 

We can’t kid ourselves into thinking that we’re the only ones covering the topics we talk about in our business content. Even the nichest niche has a couple of players in the game. So you need to make it clear what makes you different. 

Generic content isn’t as valuable to people and, therefore, isn’t as valuable to AI. It wants to meet the needs of its users!

Strong opinions, storytelling, and tone of voice enrich its answers and therefore the satisfaction of its users. That’s what it’s looking for in its references. 

Have a point of view. Infuse your personal experience into it. Give it a good dash of personality. 

Assuming AI already trusts you

AI wants credibility. It’s imperative to its use and adoption! Granted, it doesn’t always get it right. I’ve had to fact-check ChatGPT a couple of times. But in principle, AI tools are looking for sources, not hearsay. 

That means you have to prove your authority. Who are you to speak on your area of expertise? 

Author bios on blogs, about pages with clear credentials and detailed product information give AI the context it needs to verify you as a trusted source. 

Don’t forget to add schemas to key brand information so AI can find it easier. Make this really rich and informative content. AI is all about concepts and semantics, not just a keyword soup. 

Putting all your eggs in one content basket

AI isn’t just going to take your word for it. We’d be so lucky! It’s going to see what else it can find about you online. We’re talking review sites, news articles, and any collaborations it can find. 

Don’t be fooled. This isn’t a backlink-building exercise like for SEO. AI is looking for rich, engaging, and informative content about your brand. This helps build trust in you and form its answers when talking about you.

So you need to start building an online presence outside of your website. As well as reviews, PR articles, and collaborations, share content on third-party sites like LinkedIn, Medium, and Quora. AI likes to quote from public sites more than private business sites.

Fix these mistakes and you’ll get on AI’s good side!

AI will see you as a reliable, findable, and quotable source to use in its answers and give you the brand awareness boost of being quoted, referenced, and mentioned in AI answers. What business wouldn’t like a shoutout?

You don’t have to figure this all out alone. At decipher. we write content that humans, AI bots, and you love so you can get your brand in front of more people who want to be a part of your movement. Drop us a line at info@decipher.agency, why don’t you?