In brief
- The click is no longer the only outcome of a search. A share of informational queries ends in a summary generated by Google, ChatGPT or Perplexity. The goal becomes being the source cited in that summary, not just the first link on the page.
- Content picked up by an AI engine shares four traits. A direct answer at the top of the page, a heading structure that follows real questions, dated and attributed data, an identifiable publisher.
- Eight in-depth pages beat thirty shallow ones. One pillar page per topic, satellites that dig into one angle and point to it: this structure makes a topic readable for an engine as for a reader.
- SEO is judged over 6 to 12 months. Over the first 90 days, you track impressions, query coverage and citations obtained, not revenue.
The 2023 version of this page recommended keeping keyword density between 3% and 5%. That advice was everywhere at the time, passed from guide to guide. Today it has no effect, and it already pushed writers to produce sentences nobody wanted to read.
What made that advice obsolete is not an algorithm update, it is a shift in the outcome: a search no longer systematically leads to a list of links. Google extended its generated summaries (AI Overviews) to France in spring 2025, ChatGPT opened its web search at the end of 2024, Perplexity established the habit of the sourced answer.
The symptom is easy to spot in a small business: impressions hold up in Search Console, clicks fall, and nobody understands why. The content is not worse. It is consumed elsewhere, in a summary that cites three sources and you are not one of them.
What has changed between 2023 and today
2023 SEO optimised a page for a query and measured a position. That framework still holds for transactional searches, those where the user wants to buy, compare a price or find a provider. The link remains the normal outcome there, and position 1 keeps all its value.
The drop-off happens on informational queries: the “how to”s, definitions, comparisons of methods. These are the ones AI summaries handle best, and the ones that fed a good share of small businesses’ blog traffic.
The consequence is twofold. Traffic from informational content will shrink, and you need to anticipate it rather than suffer it. Opposite it appears another form of visibility: the citation, which exposes you to a reader who typed nothing about your brand and discovers you in a recommendation context.
This visibility is not measured like a click, but it can be worked on. We treat it as an extension of organic and paid search rather than as a separate discipline: same content, same technical foundations, stricter structural requirements.
Writing to be cited, not just to be ranked
An AI engine does not read a page like a user. It extracts fragments from it: a passage that answers, a figure with its source, a self-contained definition. It cites what it can isolate without risk of misreading. Four settings make the difference.
The answer first, the context after
Place at the top of the page a direct, self-contained answer to the question in the title, in 40 to 80 words, with no reference to what follows. This page’s “In brief” block is an example: each bullet stands on its own, with the subject named explicitly.
Avoid pronouns and holding phrases such as “we will see below”. An extracted fragment must remain understandable out of context, otherwise it will not be picked up.
A heading structure that follows real questions
Write headings as questions or complete statements, not as labels. “How long before the first SEO results?” can be extracted; “The time factor” tells a machine nothing.
One H1 per page, H2s that split the topic into independent blocks, H3s under their parent. A broken hierarchy muddles the analysis of the page for no aesthetic gain.
Data that is dated, quantified and attributed
A figure without a date or source will not be picked up, or worse, will be picked up and expose you. Cite a figure that is dated, sourced, and checked again at the source before each republication, not a percentage memorised once and for all. Without a solid source, describe a mechanism instead of inventing a percentage.
Date your pages and keep that date honestly up to date. A page revised in depth deserves a new date; a typo fix does not.
An identifiable publisher
Models weight the reliability of their sources. A signed page, attached to a company whose address, registration number (SIREN in France) and legal notice can be checked, starts with an advantage over an anonymous text.
Three things to put in place: a named author with a dedicated page, Organization and Article structured data consistent with the visible content, an “About” page that says what you do and since when. As often with artificial intelligence applied to marketing, the machine does not judge your talent, it judges signals.
The cluster: one pillar page, satellites that serve it
The question we hear most often: should we publish more? The answer is almost always no. Thirty 600-word articles that skim thirty topics produce thirty average pages, none of which is an authority on anything.
The reason is structural. An engine associates a site with a topic when it finds a coherent set of pages that answer and complement one another. Thirty isolated pages do not form a set, they form a scattering, and they often compete with each other on the same queries.
The format that works has two levels. A pillar page covers a whole topic, densely, and serves as the entry point. Around it, six to ten satellites each dig into a precise angle (a question, a case, a comparison) and point to the pillar with an explicit anchor.
What to rememberEight in-depth pages beat thirty shallow ones: they concentrate inbound links, updates and editorial attention on a scope you can keep up. A small business publishing twice a month builds a solid cluster in a year. The same business publishing eight times a month produces volume and nothing else.
Three search intents, three different kinds of content
A query does not express a keyword, it expresses a need at a precise moment. Three families stand out, and each calls for a different page format.
| Intent | Typical queries | What to write | Exposure to AI summaries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Informational | “How does internal linking work”, “what is a content cluster” | Educational content, with no sales pitch. The reader learns, they do not buy. | High: write first with citation in mind |
| Comparative | “SEO agency or freelancer”, “price of an SEO audit” | Criteria, price ranges, and the cases where your solution is not the right one. That honesty tips a decision. | Medium: the reader wants to check their sources |
| Transactional | “Digital marketing agency Lyon”, “SEO quote” | A short service page, proof, scope, visible form. The subject becomes conversion rate optimisation. | Low: the click remains the normal outcome |
The mistake not to makeConfusing these three families is the most costly mistake we correct for our clients: it produces pages that never convert. A sales page ranked on an informational query attracts readers who came to learn, and who leave straight away.
A simple rule for deciding: type the query and look at what the engine already shows. If it offers guides, it has classed the intent as informational, and your sales page stands no chance there. The split of channels that serve these intents is detailed in our article on what SEO, search ads and social really do.
Internal linking is for ranking pages, not for decoration
Internal linking is often treated as a formality: three links added at the end of writing, at random among recent articles. It is a waste, because it is the only ranking lever you control entirely.
An internal link tells an engine two things: this page deserves a visit, and here is what it is about. The anchor carries the second message. “Find out more” passes on nothing; “the 90-day SEO measurement method” passes on a complete topic.
Three principles are enough. Satellites point to the pillar first, not the reverse. Every page receives at least three links from other pages, otherwise it is orphaned and nobody will find it. Links go in the body of the text, where the reader asks the question, not piled up in the footer.
Also check depth: an important page must be reachable within three clicks of the home page. Beyond that, it is crawled less often and considered secondary, whatever its content. On a catalogue, the same lever settles a competition nobody sees: your category page and your product page often target the same query, and linking is what designates which of the two should win.
Measuring: what to look at, and when
SEO is not judged at three weeks. Content published today is indexed within a few days, tested on secondary queries for one to two months, then stabilises between the third and sixth month. Five indicators are enough, and each is read on its own horizon.
| Indicator | What it signals | Where to find it | When it moves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queries generating impressions | The cluster is starting to take. This number rises before clicks do. | Search Console | Months 1 to 2 |
| Average position on target queries | Moving from position 40 to position 15 is real progress, even with no extra clicks. | Search Console | Months 2 to 3 |
| Indexed pages and crawl frequency | A page published and never crawled signals a technical problem, not an editorial one. | Search Console | From publication |
| Citations in generated answers | Your visibility outside the click. Test your ten target questions and note who is cited. | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google, monthly manual check | Month 3 and beyond |
| Organic traffic by cluster, then attributed conversions | The economic effect of the set-up, once rankings have stabilised. | Analytics tool | From month 6 |
These measurements assume reliable collection, which is rarely the case: cookie refusals, blockers, visits from AI assistants with no usable referrer. That is the subject of our article on the blind spots of browser-side measurement.
To close that gap, our sister company Datafirefly publishes DataFirefly Server-Side, a server-side tracking platform whose free plan covers 10,000 requests a month. Without reliable measurement, a content set-up is managed on gut feeling for twelve months.
Your 90-day plan
Here is the sequence we apply when the starting point is an existing blog, poorly structured, with old articles. It requires neither an expensive tool nor a dedicated team.
Days 1 to 30: sort before writing
- Export the list of your pages with their impressions and clicks over 12 months from Search Console.
- Sort each page into three piles: keep and enrich, merge with another, delete with a redirect.
- Choose a single pillar topic, the one closest to your most profitable offer, and list the eight questions your customers really ask about it.
- Check, for each of these questions, what Google and ChatGPT answer today, and whom they cite.
Days 31 to 60: build the pillar
- Rewrite or write the pillar page: direct answer at the top, headings worded as questions, dated and sourced data.
- Apply the 301 redirects decided in phase 1 and check that none points to an error.
- Publish two satellites that each cover one question from the list, with a contextual link to the pillar.
- Add
Article,FAQPageandOrganizationstructured data, and sign the pages with a named author.
Days 61 to 90: link and measure
- Go back over the old articles you kept and add a link to the pillar from each, with a descriptive anchor.
- Check that no page in the cluster is orphaned and none is more than three clicks from the home page.
- Publish two more satellites and record your Search Console indicators.
- Redo the citation test on your ten target questions and compare with the day-30 check.
After 90 days, you will not have a spectacular curve. You will have a clean base, a topic covered seriously and indicators moving in the right direction. That is what it takes for months 4 to 12 to produce something.
Frequently asked questions
Is SEO dead now that AI-generated answers have arrived?
No, but its goal splits in two. Transactional queries keep producing clicks to sites, and ranking position keeps all its value there. On informational queries, the stake becomes being the source cited in the generated answer, which requires content that is structured, dated and attributed to an identifiable publisher.
How do you know whether ChatGPT or Perplexity cites your site?
No tool yet provides a comprehensive measurement. The practical method is to test your ten to twenty target questions manually in each assistant, once a month, and note the sources cited. This check takes an hour and gives a usable trend after three months. It almost always holds the same surprise: the sources cited are rarely brand sites, and we explain in our article on citability by AI engines why most of it happens somewhere other than your own pages.
How many articles do you need to publish a month to make progress?
Volume matters less than consistency. Two articles a month that dig into the same topic and link to each other produce more results than eight scattered articles. For a small business, two to four publications a month on one cluster at a time is a sustainable and sufficient pace.
Should you delete old articles that no longer generate traffic?
Not automatically. An old but useful page gets rewritten and attached to the cluster, which is better than starting again on a new URL. You delete with a 301 redirect the redundant pages and those containing false or outdated information.
How long before you see the first results of a content strategy?
Allow three months to see impressions and rankings move, six months for measurable traffic, twelve months for an effect on inbound enquiries. A set-up abandoned at eight weeks never had the chance to work.
Where to start without rewriting everything
Faced with a blog of forty mixed articles, the temptation is to redo everything. It is the best way to do nothing. Take a single topic, the one closest to your most profitable offer, and cover it completely: one pillar, four satellites, clean linking, dated data.
This first cluster will serve as your benchmark. It will tell you how long a serious page really takes in your business, which topics your customers search for, and how fast your site reacts. Those three answers are worth more than a hundred-page audit, and they shape everything that follows.
Unsure whether your content can be cited by AI engines? We start by recording what Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity answer today on your ten most strategic questions, and whom they cite instead of you. Let’s talk.