The New Rules of Search in the AI Era

By now, I'm sure everyone loves seeing their company's name pop up first in the results for a related Google search, but the real question is: How do you reach that point? 

The debate over whether search engine optimization (SEO) is still relevant in the era of AI continues, but as most research shows, SEO's importance can never really be diminished. Instead, reports note that SEO is significantly more essential in today's AI era. 

Let's go back to the basics, the core focus of this blog series: language in the AI space (using the massive e-commerce industry to illustrate). Given that most users now use significantly more AI-related programs as search engines, the language businesses use to structure optimal SEO is more essential than ever. This is because, instead of aiming for your company's website or products to show up first with SEO-rich keywords or product tags, you now have to ensure the SEO setup is rich enough for gen AI programs to pull up your website or products. 

A brief by Bain & Company on customer use of "AI search" reveals that shopping-related prompts or searches jumped from 7.8 percent to 9.8 percent in 2025. The concept of optimizing for AI (AIO), or what some call generative engine optimization (GEO) is thus what entrepreneurs and e-commerce owners have to think about when structuring their online stores or websites and their individual product or service offerings. AI optimization enhances AI performance by improving accuracy, efficiency, scalability and cost through model tuning, data refinement and automation.

So, where to begin when it comes to optimization in general, whether search engine or generative engine? The simple answer is that the processes for both are quite similar. Optimization, by nature, operates on similar principles; it's just a matter of honing those principles and adjusting them to your particular platform (whether e-commerce, a simple landing page, an app or even social media pages). Many e-commerce advice blogs suggest research as the first step. By researching keywords relating to your industry, product or service, the correct corpus of words can be curated that will be useful for good optimization. After researching keywords, choose your goal (visibility, clicks, sales, queries, etc.). This goal will help guide you on how best to structure all content on your platform in a way that is most useful to meet that end goal. Another key step in the process of optimization is positioning yourself apart from competitors. This can easily be achieved by how content and, specifically, word usage is positioned on your platform.

For instance, say you have an e-commerce store that specializes in confectionery items. A clever word play on things like home page banners or main category taglines can use words directly from your competitor's brand name in a way that makes it seem like it was meant as a descriptive word. Something like "Indulge in sweet, crispy & creamy goodness" as a tagline builds on the already-established SEO of a well-known brand like Krispy Kreme while still using original content and upholding trademark laws.

Now that we have discussed how to tackle the process of optimization in general, let’s dive into how AI can assist with curating SEO that can be useful to your platform. Given that Google is the largest search engine by far, aiming to craft SEO practices that suit Google Merchant Center and Google Analytics criterion is one of the best ways to go. A lot of guidance on how to structure data is readily available on Google Search Central, specifically in terms of guidelines that will ensure product crawls are smooth and hassle-free. Here, you can also find best practices on things like ideal character counts for product titles, product descriptions, image taglines, banner text, alt text and much more. Adjusting your content to uphold as many of these guidelines as possible increases the likelihood of visibility for your product or website. 

In addition to this, making use of LLMs to assist with curating SEO-rich content from titles to meta descriptions can significantly ease the task. Many companies use programs such as SemRush, Surfer SEO and Alli AI, but the more well-known ChatGPT, Jasper, Copilot and Gemini platforms work just as well. Knowing which platform to use is dependent on things like budget, accessibility and, according to a Shopify blog post, the type of industry you are in.  

Starting off your prompt with keyword suggestions specific to your industry is a great first step in using AI to assist with optimization. You can start with a seed keyword, specific to your product or industry that will ensure the AI platform you're using has a decent base to work from. For instance, an enterprise tech company like 1105 Media (which owns Pure AI), could insert the following prompt: "SEO keywords for enterprise tech company, 1105 Media." Here, the seed keyword is “enterprise tech,” and giving the company name makes it even more specific, which then produces a great list of appropriate keywords.

As mentioned earlier, from this point, AI can help cluster ideal words to enhance optimization. Using AI to collect these keywords simplifies the task, making the process efficient and seamless, since AI can instantly scan a myriad of platforms to arrive at an ideal keyword corpus. It's not necessary to be that obsessed with your prompt; as shown below, a simple, clear-cut instruction can get you a decent keyword cluster. However, you know your industry and your product base the best, so if things are missing from the cluster, you can always follow-up prompt with an example of what was missing to further guide AI to produce an ideal list. 

The best thing about using AI for these keywords is that it can scan multiple competitors' websites within your industry and provide keywords that are rich for SEO purposes throughout Google, social media and gen AI platforms, especially if this is specifically asked for in your prompt. 

As AI progresses and industries change, the way to tackle optimization, whether for search engines or other goals, must be equally dynamic. Researching new and trendy ways to position your business is a great way to stay ahead of the curve!

Posted by Ammaarah Mohamed on 12/03/2025