BacklinkoModify

2025-08-14 22:41:19

You don’t need an SEO plugin to help your website rank in Google.

In fact, you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing with them.

But:

They can make optimizing your website a whole lot easier if you do use them correctly.

We’re talking:

• Faster page speeds
• Better optimized content
• Fewer technical SEO issues

All without touching any code.

So how do you choose which plugin to use? Can you use more than one?

And the big one — should you use Yoast or Rank Math?

You’ll get the answers to these burning questions below.

But first, here’s the tl;dr on the best SEO plugins for WordPress:

Note: We’ve stuck with plugins that can directly improve your SEO. You won’t see analytics plugins like Monster Insights or external keyword generators on this list. These are useful tools in their own right — but they’re not true SEO plugins.

1. Rank Math

Best all-in-one SEO plugin for new WordPress sites

Pricing: Free version available; Pro plans start at $7.99/month billed annually

Rank Math has pretty much everything you need in an SEO plugin. If you’re new to SEO, it’ll handle all the important stuff for you, including:

• Content optimization
• Image SEO
• Internal and external linking
• Local SEO
• Schema markup
• Sitemaps
• Redirects

And way more.

It’s actually the go-to recommendation from our own Head of SEO, Leigh McKenzie:

“Rank Math is my no. 1 choice across the board. For any site starting from scratch, I’d always recommend Rank Math first.”

Let’s go through some of the features behind his recommendation:

Manage Metadata and Social Previews

Starting with the basics, Rank Math lets you manage your page’s SEO title, meta description, and how it appears on social media — right within the post editor:

It also lets you preview what the post will look like when you share it on Facebook and X/Twitter:

This gives you more control over how your content looks in SERPs and social feeds.

It’s a pretty rudimentary feature, and hardly one that separates it from the likes of Yoast below when taken in isolation.

But how your social content looks can have a big impact on the engagement your posts get — and how many people click through to read your content. So it’s a useful feature for those looking to share their content beyond their blog.

Get SEO Suggestions as You Write

Rank Math also gives you SEO guidance as you’re creating your content in the WordPress editor. Like having your own SEO assistant you can call on as you write.

It’ll highlight things like missing focus keywords in your meta description, intro, and throughout your content.

But honestly? I never use this feature.

So why am I calling it out here?

Because when you’re just starting out creating SEO content, it’s actually super helpful for keeping you on track.

Sure, once you’re familiar with the basics of content optimization, you’ll do all of this naturally. But as a beginner, this gentle guidance can help you learn faster (and create better optimized content in the process).

Plus, you can click “Fix with AI” to generate a suggestion and save time on the small changes.

It’s not going to be perfect. But for a one-click, two-second job?

I’ll happily use this, because it speeds up optimization.

Plus, you can tweak or regenerate the output anyway, so it’s useful as a starting point.

Broken Links and Redirects

Rank Math flags broken links on your site using its built-in 404 Monitor.

You can then set up a redirect right from the dashboard:

This feature keeps your internal links working. It ensures you’re passing authority between your pages and that you’re offering a good user experience.

It also reduces plugin bloat as you don’t need a separate plugin to handle broken links.

The fact the free version of the plugin comes with built-in redirection capabilities is a massive win in my book.

I’ve personally leaned on this particular part of the plugin heavily multiple times.

Firstly, it’s great for just quickly setting up redirects when you change the URL of a post (it even does this automatically).

But you can also set it up to move entire categories of posts or pages through the filters.

Just choose “contains” and you’ll be able to move all your content from /old-path/page to /new-path/page without your users even noticing — and without any hassle on your end.

I don’t see enough people praising Rank Math for the redirect functionality. But honestly it’s a lifesaver.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Rank Math clearly has a lot of features, which is great. But it can also feel overwhelming at first. That’s just the nature of any “all-in-one” style plugin.

However, once you know where things are and what you need, it’s fairly easy to navigate.

Also, on the content improvement side of things, readability feedback is pretty limited. It checks basic things like paragraph length and image use. But it won’t help you improve sentence structure or tone.

(If you need more focus on that, check out the fifth plugin on this list.)

But overall, these drawbacks are pretty minor. Rank Math is still our number one recommendation if you need an SEO plugin.

2. Yoast SEO

Best for beginners who want step-by-step SEO guidance inside WordPress

Pricing: Free version available; Premium starts at $99/year

Yoast SEO is probably the first plugin you came across when you started looking into WordPress SEO. And for good reason — it’s installed on 10+ million sites and has around 26K five-star reviews.

It’s been around for so long and has such a clear purpose that its WordPress plugin directory URL path is literally just “/wordpress-seo/”:

It’s the second of the “big two” WordPress SEO plugins alongside RankMath, and it’s worth addressing why we put it second before we get into the details of the plugin itself.

In summary: We usually recommend Rank Math for a first-time WordPress site owner. It’s packed with features, and its free version has the edge over Yoast in a few areas. These include redirects, multiple focus keywords per post, and more extensive schema markup options.

But Yoast is pretty evenly matched in a lot of ways. Especially if you opt for the paid version.

In fact, this is the specific SEO plugin we use for Backlinko.

My personal recommendation is to try them both (separately) and see which one works best for you.

Note: Don’t use them both at the same time, as running multiple all-in-one SEO plugins on the same site can lead to compatibility issues.

Okay, now let’s go through what I like most about the Yoast SEO plugin:

Optimize Search and Social Previews

Like Rank Math, Yoast helps you optimize how your content appears both in search results and on social media.

You can easily update your SEO title, meta description, and URL slug for every page or post:

You also get a live preview of how your content will appear in Google search results and on socials.

It’s very similar to Rank Math in this respect. But I wanted to call it out here anyway as it’s some fairly fundamental functionality for a WordPress SEO plugin.

Get Real-Time SEO and Readability Feedback

Yoast analyzes your SEO as you write, using a simple green/orange/red traffic light system.

Green means you’re following best practices, while orange suggests there’s room for improvement. Red highlights critical issues you should prioritize.

Each suggestion is actionable, helping you easily optimize your pages, even if you’re new to SEO.

Yoast also gives you a detailed breakdown of your content’s readability.

You’ll see checks for things like passive voice, sentence length, and consecutive sentence starters. In this respect, it does offer a bit more than Rank Math.

My advice: Don’t chase all the green lights thinking it’ll help you rank. Content quality and value for the reader matter far more than hitting a certain percentage or score.

However, Yoast’s feedback does help you spot common issues and make your writing clearer for both users and search engines.

Like I said in the Rank Math section, I don’t personally use these features. But beginner me found himself looking to them quite a lot for basic guidance.

Manage XML Sitemaps

Yoast creates a dynamic XML sitemap for your site and updates it as you publish new content.

Here’s what it looks like for Backlinko:

This is a basic but very useful feature (Rank Math does this too).

Just make sure to submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console. This helps Google discover and index your content.

Further reading: Top 8 Sitemap Generator Tools in 2025 (Free & Premium)

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Yoast’s SEO scoring system can feel rigid. For example, you might get flagged for not using your main keyword in the first sentence even if it doesn’t fit there naturally.

And I’ll often see site owners that are new to SEO sticking too closely to these guidelines and creating pretty mediocre content as a result.

But if you treat the feedback as guidance, not strict rules, Yoast can still be a helpful way to catch easy-to-miss issues.

Further reading: Learn more about the plugin with our full Yoast SEO guide.

A word on a few alternatives before I move on:

The all-in-one SEO plugin market is dominated by Yoast and Rank Math. But another big player we can’t forget to mention is aptly named All in One SEO (AISEO).

It does a lot of the same stuff as the other two, but they just do it better. It’s missing key free features like redirects, and it can get pricey if you want to use it on several sites.

Like I said earlier though, you should try these plugins out for yourself if you’re struggling to choose. The free options are more than enough in most cases, and they’ll give you a taste of what to expect should you want to commit to a paid option.

FYI: I don’t personally pay for any SEO plugins besides WP Rocket (more on that next). But we do use Yoast Premium on Backlinko and Rank Math Pro on Traffic Think Tank.

3. WP Rocket

Best for improving your website speed without needing a developer

Pricing: $59/year for one website, $119/year for three websites

WP Rocket is probably my favorite of all the plugins on this list, even if it’s not technically the best overall. It’s a performance plugin designed to speed up WordPress websites. That’s all it aims to do, and boy does it succeed.

I run a somewhat well optimized site, and here’s how it looks in PageSpeed Insights without WP Rocket installed:

After installing the plugin and turning on the most important features, here’s how it looks:

Let’s just pause on those numbers for a second:

• 20 point increase in overall performance score
• 2.1 second improvement in first contentful paint
• 30 ms to 0 ms total blocking time
• 2.8 second improvement in largest contentful paint

Again, it’s a decent baseline to begin with. But WP Rocket improves my site performance in ways I otherwise can’t manage on a site that’s quite heavy on the Elementor elements.

That’s an important point in itself: you 100% can make your site run fast without SEO plugins like WP Rocket.

But you will need to make sacrifices unless you’re an experienced developer (which I am not).

So if you also want to improve your site speed without digging into the code or harming your UX, here’s why you should consider WP Rocket:

Caching Made Simple

WP Rocket makes performance optimization easy. For example, I didn’t have to touch a single setting for the caching features to kick in, and you can clear your cache at the touch of a button:

This is a feature some WordPress hosts and other plugins offer (my own web host does, for example). But I like WP Rocket’s because it’s easy to do within a dashboard that also does so much more.

For a non-developer like me, this kind of out-of-the-box performance boost is extremely useful.

File Optimization

You can also dig into advanced settings to minify your CSS and JavaScript, optimize images and fonts, and connect to a CDN.

These tweaks can cut load time, reduce file sizes, and can even improve Core Web Vitals. In other words, they can have a major impact on your site speed.

(And as someone with no coding experience, there’s no way I could do any of this without a plugin.)

Now for the second and only other feature on this list that I’ll describe with the phrase “life saver”:

It comes with one-click exclusions for popular tools like Google Analytics, AdSense, and Stripe, along with other WordPress plugins, like Elementor:

That means you’re less likely to break your tracking, ads, payment processing, or UX while optimizing. Which, believe me, is easy (and frustrating) to do.

And you don’t need to dig through documentation to figure out what to exclude.

You can also create custom exclusions, and these are handy if you do know what’s causing issues.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

Some layout elements may break if you enable file optimization without adding exclusions. In my case, my Elementor post cards got distorted. But excluding the right files fixed it.

(Finding the right files to exclude took me a lot of trial and error, but your mileage may vary.)

The settings can also feel pretty technical if you’re not a web developer. I had to Google a lot before knowing what to toggle.

However, WP Rocket’s help center docs were solid. And once everything was dialed in, my site’s performance improved significantly. (Again, see the screenshots at the start of this section.)

Free alternative: When I first started playing around with WordPress websites, I used Autoptimize for a lot of the things WP Rocket does.

It’s not as extensive when you use the free version, but it’ll get you a meaningful chunk of the way there if site speed is a big concern for you.

Plus, I still run this on a few of my lower priority sites when I just want to tick the main performance boxes.

4. The SEO Framework

Best lightweight, minimalist SEO plugin

Pricing: Free; paid plans start at $7/month (paid yearly)

The SEO Framework is a free and lightweight plugin for WordPress that quietly handles the SEO essentials.

It’s no Rank Math or Yoast, but it will still do a lot of the most important things for you.

This plugin is popular among developers for a reason. It runs fast, doesn’t clutter your dashboard, and avoids the “all-in-one” bloat you get with other SEO plugins.

Here’s what you get with the SEO Framework plugin:

Get Instant SEO Feedback

One of the SEO Framework’s most helpful features is the plugin’s color-coded SEO bar. This gives you a quick visual of how well optimized your pages are.

At first, the labels can look a bit cryptic.

But once you hover over them, they explain what’s working and what needs improvement.

For example, the plugin flagged my meta title as “far too short” and noted that it was automatically generated from the page title. (At least I assume that’s what the “TG” means.)

It explained that the title lacked information, which helped me understand I’d need to customize it to improve its SEO performance.

Honestly, I’d maybe like a little more specific detail here. It’s not clear what “more information” it means. But it does make it easy to do a high-level audit of your content optimization without opening each page.

If it flags your title or description, you can open the page editor and tweak the meta fields directly to optimize them:

The SEO Framework also shows each page’s indexing status. If a page is indexed, it appears in green. If there’s an indexing issue, it tells you exactly what’s wrong.

In my case, it showed that all my published pages were indexed correctly. And a few unpublished ones were flagged, as expected:

Obviously it’s not going to be as in-depth as Google Search Console. But it’s a useful at-a-glance overview of your overall indexing status.

Automate SEO Title and Meta Description Generation

Once you find titles and meta descriptions to optimize, the SEO Framework automatically generates meta them based on your content.

But you can still tweak auto-generated meta elements to add more value as needed.

That’s it, that’s the feature.

It’s nothing fancy, and it’s not always perfect. But for a lightweight SEO plugin, this is a great timesaver.

You can also control how your page appears on social media. You can even add a custom image for Facebook or X:

If you like this functionality of the likes of Yoast and Rank Math but don’t need all the extra features, the SEO Framework plugin could be all you need.

Simple Base Plugin with Room to Expand

The SEO Framework is intentionally minimal to be fast, lightweight, and free of unnecessary extras. That makes it a great choice if you’re looking for something that won’t slow your site down or overwhelm you with options.

And if you ever need additional features, like schema markup, third-party connections, or local SEO support, you can always install them as separate extensions.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The SEO Framework is lightweight, which means it’s also feature-light. It has the basics, but it won’t cover everything for you.

To get a bit pickier, I noticed that when I try to edit an automatically generated SEO title or meta description, the entire field clears as soon as I click it.

That means I can’t just tweak a few words. I have to retype the whole thing from scratch. It would be a smoother experience if I could simply edit the existing text in place.

But the fact this is such a small and specific issue is testament to just how good the plugin is.

5. Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Best for optimizing your content for search right inside the WordPress editor

Pricing: Free, but you can optimize more content with an active Semrush subscription

Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant helps you optimize content as you write it inside the WordPress editor. It’s not an all-in-one solution, and is purely content-focused.

It works by pulling recommendations from your target keyword and analyzing your draft in real time for SEO, readability, tone of voice, and originality.

Let’s take a look at my favorite features of the plugin:

Optimize Your Readability

Semrush calls out exactly what you need to fix to improve your content’s readability, including:

• Sentences that are hard to read
• Suggestions to use active voice
• Specific words to swap for simpler alternatives

This is super useful if you want to make your content easier to understand and more engaging.

Improve Your On-Page SEO

The plugin also provides clear on-page SEO recommendations based on your target keywords.

At the top of the panel, it shows whether you’ve used your main keywords effectively.

When I created the blog post in the example below, I entered two main keywords: “content marketing” and “content marketing for small businesses.”

Since I used both naturally throughout the article, Semrush marked them green:

But below that, it suggests semantically related keywords based on content that’s already ranking well for these terms. As you include those terms, they turn green too:

This is where the Semrush plugin goes a step further than the likes of Yoast. It leverages Semrush’s data to give you a helpful way to improve your topical depth based on what’s already ranking — which is a key part of building topical authority.

Why does this matter?

Because search engines like Google are good at recognizing when a piece of content truly covers the topic in depth — rather than just using the target keyword a bunch of times.

When you include related terms, you’re showing Google that your content is contextually relevant and comprehensive.

Analyze Your Tone of Voice

Wondering what your content actually sounds like from a reader’s perspective?

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant shows whether your writing comes across as casual, formal, or somewhere in between. And whether your tone stays consistent throughout the post.

For example, it labeled my draft as “Neutral” with 95% tone consistency:

That’s a helpful signal that the post flows well without jumping between writing styles.

That said, don’t let the score alone inform your edits. Instead, use it as a signal to evaluate your writing with fresh eyes and ask:

“Does this sound like me/my brand?”

It also pointed out a few phrases that sounded slightly off-brand. It then suggested alternatives to smooth them out:

They’re not always perfect suggestions, but it’s useful if you’re writing for a specific brand voice and want to keep it consistent across all your articles.

Downsides But Not Dealbreakers

The Semrush SEO Writing Assistant is not a comprehensive SEO plugin. It focuses on optimizing content for search engines and doesn’t replace Yoast or Rank Math.

So, it’s best to use it in combination with other SEO plugins.

Note: Try this plugin along with more tools to improve your SEO with a 14-day trial on a Semrush Pro subscription.

Ready to Choose the Right SEO Plugin for Your Website?

The right SEO plugin can massively improve your WordPress website’s performance.

But it’s also important to set clear expectations.

These tools help you optimize. They don’t rank content for you.

To actually improve your visibility in search, you need to publish great content, improve your site’s performance, and cover the basics of SEO.

So, what should you do next?

Start with our complete SEO checklist to make sure your site is fully optimized for search.

The post 5 Best SEO Plugins for WordPress (Tried & Tested) appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-14 21:59:42

A few months back, one of my clients pinged me on Slack and said:

Sure enough, when prompted, ChatGPT confidently responded, “No, the platform does not have that feature, but this other competitor does!”.

For obvious reasons, this was worrying for the client.

Not only was ChatGPT spreading misinformation about their product, it was actively pitching an alternative solution.

The source of the misinformation: A single old blog post that hadn’t been updated in two years.

How many potential buyers decided not to book a sales call because of this?

How many had discovered a new competitor instead?

This issue signals a large shift in how bottom-of-funnel product research is done.

Before: Your website was the source of truth.

It was your “always on” salesperson. You kept your homepage and product pages fresh, and that was where buyers did their digging.

Now: Large language models (LLMs) are a product research assistant. A new touchpoint at a critical stage in the buying journey.

They’re the modern day gatekeepers, acting as the layer between you and your target audience, communicating on your behalf.

And their source of info? It’s often sources you’d forgotten even existed.

As marketers, it falls to us to make sure LLMs are communicating the right things in the right way about our products and services.

In this article, I’ll show you the 7-step playbook my team is developing to tackle this challenge — what we’re calling Branded Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

Free resource: For step 6, we’ve created a handy spreadsheet to help you ideate common questions. Download it here.

What is Branded GEO?

Branded GEO is the process of making sure conversational AIs and LLMs give accurate, helpful, and up-to-date answers about your brand. It focuses on branded prompts and queries.

This targets a highly valuable audience segment, including those who are:

• In the market to buy a solution or service like yours
• Already know you are a viable option and are exploring your offer

This segment is showing the highest intent — they’re asking questions about your product, and they’re using your brand name in their prompts.

Like branded SEO, branded GEO is easier to influence. It’s more actionable than trying to optimize for broad industry queries. For that reason, it’s a fantastic starting point if you want to explore GEO.

Note: Generative engine optimization is the broader practice of optimizing for AI-powered search systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews. Branded GEO is a specific subset focused on branded queries.

For the following exercise, I’ll use ChatGPT as the LLM and the B2B SaaS product, Airtable, as an example.

Airtable has recently undergone some serious positioning and product pivots, so it illustrates the new challenges of branded GEO.

Let’s start with a quick setup.

Step 1: Set Up Your LLM

Head to ChatGPT and turn on temporary mode. This avoids any personalization skewing your results.

Also turn on the “search” feature — this ensures ChatGPT is accessing information after June 2024 when it was last trained.

This is currently the data we can influence.

Step 2: Enter Your First Branded Prompt

Next, prompt ChatGPT with a simple question: “What is [your brand name]?”.

Here are the results for Airtable:

Step 3: Analyze the Response

Pay attention to how ChatGPT describes your product and company.

Is it accurate? Is it how you would describe your company?

Or do things need to change?

With Airtable, we see what must be a frustrating situation playing out.

Airtable pivoted in June 2025, shifting away from their “super powerful spreadsheet” positioning and relaunching as an:

That’s quite the change. And ChatGPT hasn’t caught up yet.

Here’s how Airtable positions themselves versus how ChatGPT does:

Luckily, most readers are unlikely to see such a drastic mismatch.

But at the current rate of technological innovation, almost all companies are undergoing continuous reinvention, and so you are likely to find outdated features and positioning.

Step 4: Find the Source of Misinformation

In this step, we start to tackle the misinformation by looking for its source.

We usually find that ChatGPT has sourced its information from:

• An outdated article
• A LinkedIn page that hasn’t been updated in three years
• A landing page that reflects the “old you”
• A hallucination due to completely missing information on that topic

As a quick example, I was recently living in Melbourne, and ChatGPT picked that up from a LinkedIn post and stated that my agency, Spicy Margarita, was founded in Melbourne. (We’re based in the UK).

Despite my travel plans, I wasn’t keen to be positioned as an Australian company, so I quickly removed that mention of Melbourne, and ChatGPT’s response adapted.

To address the misinformation you find, visit the sources used and look for a match between the language used by ChatGPT and the words on the page.

See that it says you cost $1,000? Find the source that says that and update it. Fixing the issue is often this simple (unless there is hallucination, which we address in the next step).

To operationalize this process, collate all the sources driving misinformation into a spreadsheet and note down:

• Whether that source should be deleted or updated
• Specific text that needs to be changed
• Specific text that needs to be added — for example, if a feature is missing, you can spell it out in the sources

For our Airtable example, we can see that a highly trusted source (Wikipedia) is currently out of date.

If we worked for Airtable, we’d start with the Wikipedia article. They should note this down and edit this page with their new positioning as soon as possible.

As a major, trusted source of internet knowledge, updating Wikipedia is likely to help influence LLMs, but it may not fix the positioning issue in one fell swoop.

Step 5: Publish, Update, or Delete Sources

For smaller brands with a relatively small web footprint, we find this task is more straightforward.

Take your latest positioning, messaging, and features, and make sure they are represented in key sources LLMs are referencing. Ideally, refresh every source that mentions your brand — from social media accounts to on-site and off-site web pages.

Brands with a larger web presence will find this task more challenging.

If, like Airtable, you have outdated articles written about you across 100s of websites you don’t control, outreach may need to be operationalized to update or take down those sources. If you have no luck with that, we’d suggest running a new campaign that seeds LLMs with lots of new sources that contain your up-to-date information.

Further reading: LLM Seeding: A New Strategy to Get Mentioned and Cited by LLMs

Given sources like Zapier and Airtable’s own starter guide (pictured below) still have their old positioning, there’s more work to do.

Here’s the branded GEO adjustment we would make for Wikipedia:

You may also find that LLMs are hallucinating something entirely. This can’t be fixed by updating or removing a source. This often happens because they didn’t find an answer in any sources.

If LLMs are hallucinating an answer, you’ll want to try to influence the answer by creating a source that answers the question with the correct information.

Start building a content roadmap with new topics to cover, directly answering those key questions your target buyer has.

These can be hosted on your blog or help center, and serve dual purposes: for branded GEO and as helpful sales material.

Step 6: Expand Your Branded Question Prompts

So far, we’ve asked just one question about your brand.

But, prospective customers are likely asking many, many questions that you’ll want to monitor.

Unfortunately, exact data on those questions is still not available.

Prompts are unlike traditional keywords. They’re often longer and more personalized. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t optimize for the less long-tail prompts and hope that bleeds through.

We can make educated guesses at the topics LLM users are asking questions about using six methods:

1. Ask Your Inbound Leads

I ask every inbound lead who found me via ChatGPT what their prompts and journey were. One even pulled the conversation up and read the exact prompt back to me — it said “I want an SEO agency in the B2B space who is staying up-to-date with AI,” and our agency came up.

This kind of insight is gold dust.

It shows you how your audience prompts, what issues they face, and what content and GEO efforts of yours are already working.

A similar technique is to look in sales insights platforms like Gong for mentions of ChatGPT and to encourage your sales team to ask the question for you.

2. Start With Common Questions

Begin with general questions that people ask about brands. Then, tailor those questions to fit your specific situation.

We’ve made a spreadsheet template to help you find the questions people ask AI about your brand.

3. Use a Keyword Research Tool

Head to your keyword research tool of choice and enter your brand name.

In Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, you can filter on “Questions” to pull a full list of the questions people are asking about your brand.

Find questions that someone considering your product might ask.

For example, these are a few I’d select for the Airtable before their pivot. Each question factors into the purchase decision.

4. Use Google Autocomplete

Another helpful tool for finding audience questions is Google Autocomplete.

You’ll find autocomplete is a part of normal Google Search. It anticipates and suggests search queries as you type, making predictions based on popular searches, your location, and your search history (so do this in incognito mode).

Enter these queries to see what people are asking:

• Is [brand name]
• How [brand name]
• Does [brand name]
• Where [brand name]
• When [brand name]
• What [brand name]

You can get more suggestions by adding each letter of the alphabet afterward, too. Like this:

To speed things up, I recommend taking screenshots of each autocomplete and uploading them all to ChatGPT for extraction and grouping.

5. Use ChatGPT Autocomplete

If you’re lucky enough to be represented in ChatGPT autocomplete already (at the time of writing, only very large brands are), this is also a place to dig into.

6. Talk to Your Sales and Support Teams

When we do this exercise with clients, we run a Q&A session with both the sales team and customer support teams.

This first-party insight is invaluable for predicting the questions your target audience has.

Here are six top questions from our client questionnaire:

• What common questions about your product do you get from prospects on sales calls?
• What do prospects misunderstand or get wrong before speaking to you?
• What common objections about your brand do you get from prospects?
• Do prospects ever mention ChatGPT and what they found there?
• What questions do people typically ask in your website chat about [brand name]?
• What usually triggers prospects to book a call or sign up for [brand name] now?

Step 7: Repeat

Now you’ve gathered your questions, it’s time to see how LLMs answer them and fix up the answers.

To do this, repeat steps 1-5.

Tracking the Impact of Branded GEO Work

The impact of branded GEO is twofold:

1. Relief: From knowing you’re being accurately represented by LLMs.
2. Additional Conversions: From removing inaccuracies and misinformation, adequately filling content gaps in your lower sales funnel, and better informing buyers before they join sales calls.

To track the impact of this exercise, we recommend:

1. Monitoring LLM output: Take your list of questions and compare the before and after. Monitor those regularly to confirm continued accuracy.
2. Track conversion metrics: Compare key conversion rates (sign-ups, demo requests, sales) before and after your LLM content improvements. I suggest you add a “Where did you hear about us?” to your sales booking forms to closely monitor leads that started in LLMs.
3. Sales team feedback: With the example in the introduction of this article, the sales team had been facing misinformation issues. If you’ve faced a similar issue, stay in close contact with them so get a pulse check on the impact.

The post Branded GEO: How to Control What AI Says About Your Brand appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-08 22:57:09

Short answer: Not yet.

But SEO as we know it is dying.

SEO used to work fairly consistently: write great content, sprinkle in keywords, land a few links — boom, rankings.

The better you followed the recipe, the better your results.

That worked because search was a relatively closed system.

Now?

It’s probabilistic.

You show up if you’ve done enough of the right things in enough places. If the system infers you’re part of the answer.

People have been announcing the death of SEO for years.

But this time, the question feels more urgent.

You might look at this projection from Semrush — showing traditional search declining while LLM traffic takes over — and call it: Game Over.

But here’s the thing:

Decline doesn’t equal death.

In this article, we’ll lay out exactly what happens as a channel moves from goldmine to ghost town — and show you where SEO sits on that curve today.

Spoiler: SEO isn’t dead yet.

But it’s changing.

And understanding that shift is how you can stay ahead.

What Makes a Marketing Channel “Dead”?

To determine whether SEO is dead, we need to understand how a marketing channel evolves.

Marketing channels follow a relatively standard lifecycle.

They start out as experimental, high-risk, and unproven (think Bluesky).

If they gain traction, they enter what Gary Vaynerchuk calls the “underpriced attention” phase. Even basic strategies see outsized returns.

Early Facebook Ads. Early TikTok. Peak LinkedIn.

But attention doesn’t stay cheap. As more people jump in, the channel becomes fairly priced.

It still delivers, but not without skill. You need strategy. Execution. Patience.

Email marketing today, for example.

Eventually, some channels tip into overpriced. You can still win — but only with deep pockets or elite execution.

Competitive Google Ads. Facebook Ads in 2025. Viable? Yes. Worth it? Not for everyone.

And then, some channels just… flatline. Negative ROI. Abandoned by 80%+ of marketers.

Still technically there — but not usually worth the time. Facebook organic for traffic, say, or Yellow Pages.

A single platform can have parts in completely different phases.

• Facebook organic for website traffic? Dead.
• Facebook organic for brand building and community? Still fairly priced.

And some channels that looked dead? They weren’t.

• The Yellow Pages are Phase 4 in most cities. But in some rural areas, they still convert.
• Direct mail is Phase 4 for most. But for hyper-local businesses, it can still be gold.

My point:

Phase 4 is rare.

Most channels don’t die. They evolve.

So, where does SEO sit on the curve?

Why People Keep Saying SEO Is Dead

Well, partly because marketers delight in announcing the death of clearly not dead things.

It’s a weird industry habit.

But also because SEO is sliding from Phase 2: Fairly Priced to Phase 3: Overpriced.

And when that happens, ROI drops, easy wins disappear, and frustration grows.

Traffic is dropping. Search behavior is shifting. The content landscape is flooded. And the job market feels unstable.

Put all that together?

It’s no surprise people are asking if SEO is on its last legs.

Let’s break down the four biggest reasons behind the panic — and separate signal from noise.

1. No-Click Search Results Are Killing Traffic

This didn’t start with AI answers.

Google’s been reducing clicks for a decade.

• Knowledge panels, calculators, unit converters: Handled factual queries
• Local packs & shopping carousels: Took over commercial-intent real estate
• Featured snippets (2015): Answered questions directly in the SERP
• People Also Ask (2016): Offered related answers—no clicks required
• AI Overviews (2024): Just the next step

So why does it feel worse now?

Because it is.

AI Overviews are among the most disruptive features Google has ever introduced for organic traffic.

Their click-stealing impact rivals or exceeds Featured Snippets — and in some cases, even Knowledge Panels.

The biggest difference is:

AI Overviews affect a much broader range of queries — especially informational and non-branded ones.

So yes, AI overviews are the latest in a long line of click-killing moves by Google.

Knowledge Panels hurt branded queries. AIOs impact every query type.

Calculators killed clicks for simple tasks. AIOs apply that behavior to everything.

If Featured Snippets were death by a thousand cuts, AIOs are a guillotine.

But here’s the twist:

Google’s AI Overviews aren’t pulling random answers out of thin air.

They’re sourcing from the same types of content that show up in organic search.

According to a study by Search Engine Land:

• Blog posts (46%) and news articles (20%) make up the majority of sources cited by AIOs.
• Structured, crawlable, keyword-aligned pages still earn visibility.
• And, while ChatGPT skews towards Wikipedia and global news sources for its data, Google’s Gemini relies heavily on company blogs.

In other words:

The SEO content you’re already creating still matters.

You just need to make it easier for AI to read and reuse.

Further reading: Want more tips for showing up in AIOs? Check out our guide to AI overviews.

2. Search Behavior Has Fragmented

We’re in the Search Everywhere era.

Source

Google still dominates, but things are changing.

Gen-Z uses social media as a search engine.

40% of young US adults are getting their news on TikTok.

Forums like Reddit and Quora are booming.

LLMs currently make up around 5.6% of all search behavior, up from 1.3% in early 2024.

So yes, search behavior is changing.

But this shift doesn’t mean traditional search engines are obsolete.

94.4% of searchers still use SERPs.

They’re just more likely to consult other sources as well.

Further reading: Build a Search Everywhere Optimization strategy with our guide.

3. It Feels Like AI Content Is Everywhere

The theory goes that, because anyone can create content in minutes with AI, SEO becomes a race to the bottom.

And it’s true that it’s easier than ever to create SEO content at scale.

But in practice, most content is still being created by human beings — entirely or with AI assistance.

In June 2025, AI content made up around 16% of all content (down from 19% in January) according to Originality.AI.

4. The SEO Job Market Might Be Tanking

SEO job listings dropped 37% in Q1 2024 compared to the same time in 2023.

But if you zoom in on the types of SEO roles being hired for across the year, the picture is more nuanced.

Some executional roles saw a dip in share over 2024:

• Content SEO made up 12.6% of SEO listings in Q1 — just 9.9% by Q4
• SEO Analyst roles dropped from 11.2% to 10.1%
• Technical SEO inched down from 5.8% to 5.4%

Meanwhile, more senior roles gained share:

• SEO Manager roles increased from 58% to 61%
• Director of SEO grew from 10.3% to 11.6%
• VP-level roles doubled their share — from 0.7% to 1.4%

The shift isn’t dramatic. But it’s directional.

Companies appear to be consolidating around smaller, more senior teams.

Less grunt work. More strategic oversight. And possibly, more reliance on AI or freelancers for execution.

So no, the SEO job market isn’t collapsing — just being restructured.

Why SEO Isn’t Dead in 2025

SEO today looks very different than it used to.

But it doesn’t meet the criteria of a dead marketing channel.

Search Volume Is Still Rising

Search activity isn’t shrinking—it’s growing.

Google search grew by over 21% in 2024, despite the impact of AI overviews. And it’s projected to increase again in 2025, according to estimates by Exploding Topics:

The narrative that searchers are switching over to LLMs is also flawed.

While people are using LLMs more and more, they aren’t necessarily using them for search.

Semrush says only 30% of ChatGPT prompts are similar to how people use search.

Things like:

• Asking for information
• Finding a website
• Comparing options
• Getting help with a purchase

The rest? More like chatting, writing, or brainstorming.

SEO Still Works

91% of marketers said SEO had a positive impact on their website performance and marketing goals in 2024.

Far from cutting SEO spend, companies are investing more.

The global SEO services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.2%.

It’s booming, not dying.

AI Overviews aren’t everywhere (yet)

As of May 2025, they show up in just 13.14% of all Google searches.

That means traditional search still handles about 86% of queries — for now.

More importantly, they’re still mostly triggered by low-value, informational queries.

But when it comes to commercial-intent keywords?

They’re still wide open.

Think long-tail phrases with CPCs over $2 and Keyword Difficulty under 30%.

That’s where you still need SEO.

SEO Job Listings Have Declined, But Only in Part

Entry-level and senior-level SEO roles actually increased in 2024.

This shift reflects more automation of routine SEO tasks — and heightened demand for strategic, senior-level expertise.

There are over 117,000 SEO jobs live on LinkedIn worldwide:

Looks like there’s still plenty of demand for SEO experts.

SEO Isn’t Dead — But It’s Changing Fast

SEO still drives results.

But ranking alone isn’t enough anymore.

To stay visible, you need to show up in search results and in AI-generated answers.

That’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.

It’s not about abandoning SEO. It’s about building on it.

Learn how to optimize for AI search with our 7-step GEO playbook.

The post Is SEO Dead? appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-08 20:46:27

ChatGPT-5 is here. Rolling out to 700M+ weekly users.

With it comes the usual hype and hot takes.

But if you’re in digital marketing, the real question is:

How does this change how people discover, research, and buy?

After months of using ChatGPT extensively (and watching competitors like Google, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok evolve), one thing’s clear:

The brands that win in AI search aren’t just chasing keywords and backlinks.

They’re building topical authority, earning third-party mentions, showing up on YouTube and social, and shaping how people talk about their brand.

In other words: they’re optimizing for how they get recommended in answers — no matter who’s asking the question.

If you want to see exactly how your brand shows up in AI answers, check out our guide to the best LLM tracking tools.

What’s New in ChatGPT-5

GPT-5 is definitely an improvement over GPT-4. But the early feeling among marketers, business owners, and even software developers is that it might not be the huge leap many thought it would be.

But still, in certain areas, there are some notable gains.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s new:

Overall Capabilities

In Sam Altman’s words: GPT-4 was like talking to a college student. GPT-5 is more like talking to an expert. A legitimate PhD in any topic area that you want. And it will be broadly available to the free tier, with limits.

For a lot of queries (think fairly basic questions), it’s much faster too. And while you used to have to choose which model to use for specific tasks to prioritize speed or raw ability, GPT-5 now makes that decision for you.

No more messing around with lots of different model names.

Better Writing

OpenAI claims that GPT-5 should write better, more natural content. For SEOs and digital marketers, this should mean improvements when it comes to AI-assisted content.

In particular, GPT-5 is significantly more accurate than its predecessors. Compared to previous models like GPT-4o and OpenAI o3, it hallucinates 4 to 10 times less often, depending on the task.

On typical ChatGPT prompts, the error rate drops to just 4.8% when using its “thinking” mode. This makes it much more reliable for research, planning, and everyday use.

But its outputs are still not a replacement for human-reviewed, high-quality content.

Coding

The biggest improvements with ChatGPT-5 over GPT-4, at least per OpenAI, are in the math and coding departments. The company seems particularly excited about its advanced coding abilities, trying to beat out competition from Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude).

“It opens up a whole new world of vibe coding, with some rough edges.”

I can see these improved coding capabilities being particularly useful for custom use cases.

For example, I could upload my fitness levels and preferred workouts, then ask ChatGPT to build a workout app that can give me specific workouts and help me track my progress over time.

Voice Mode Enhancements

You get more control over how to interact with the chatbot and, eventually, also the voice assistant. You’ll be able to choose between styles like concise and professional, or thoughtful and supportive.

Memory

The goal in terms of memory is for ChatGPT to really understand what’s meaningful to you. This way, the tool has more context about your specific situation. This should in theory lead to more tailored responses.

Plus, by mid-August, ChatGPT is gaining access to Gmail and Google Calendar. I can see this being super powerful from a business organization and productivity perspective.

Safety

ChatGPT-5 is significantly less deceptive. They have completely overhauled how they do safety training. Before, it was either to outright refuse or comply. Now it’s more nuanced.

OpenAI also introduced a new concept called “safe completions.” Essentially, it should maximize helpfulness, within safety constraints. If the model has to refuse, it will tell you why.

Knowledge Cutoff

According to OpenAI’s documentation, the model’s training data cutoff was Oct 1, 2024.

That’s newer than GPT-4o’s October 2023 cutoff, so it has a better grasp of late-2024 news changes, other trends.

It means more up-to-date baseline knowledge — but you’ll still need real-time data for anything happening in 2025.

Note: As with any new major release, it’s worth testing out for yourself to understand its capabilities for your specific needs. It’s easy for reviewers to cherry pick examples of it working incredibly well or not so well. The only way to know for sure is to try it yourself.

What Marketers Need to Know

ChatGPT-5 is a clear step up from GPT-4, with huge potential for both business and personal use.

But the fundamentals for marketers haven’t changed — the way you use LLMs and what they mean for your strategy still comes down to the same core principles.

1. ChatGPT-5 Still Pulls From Search Engines

We don’t know the exact mix GPT-5 uses for live lookups.

It could still be leaning on Google like ChatGPT-4o. It could be Bing. Most likely, it’s a blend of both plus OpenAI’s own retrieval system.

Either way, the rule for marketers stays the same:

• If you want to be in the mix for citations, you need to be findable in search engines
• That means optimizing for the right terms, having a technically sound site, and matching search intent

Optimizing for AI doesn’t replace SEO. It just makes SEO table stakes for getting recommended in AI answers.

2. AI Visibility Is a Multi-Surface Challenge

Here’s the reality today:

ChatGPT currently dominates in terms of total users. And its usage is growing:

But aside from ChatGPT, you need to consider the larger AI search space.

While ChatGPT reaches ~5X more users than Google’s Gemini app, the gap is not necessarily going to stay like that.

Just think back to the rise of Slack.

Guess who eventually reached the most users?

And the broad LLM technology behind ChatGPT is being used by all of its competitors.

For Google, that’s in AI Overviews (which reach nearly 17% of US queries) and Google AI Mode (their chat search experience).

Smaller competitors like Claude, Perplexity, Grok are still gaining share fast.

What’s the pattern?

AI discovery is not just tied to one tool. It’s happening across multiple generative engines — all with their own rules.

You need a brand strategy that works across:

• Prompts and questions
• Web results and citations
• Source quality and brand authority

Don’t just focus on ChatGPT because it’s the biggest, and your brand currently shows up there.

If your customers are using Google AI Mode, Claude, or Perplexity, and you’re not showing up in these tools, you’re leaving money on the table.

3. Brand Mentions > Backlinks

Search engines reward links.

LLMs reward mentions.

If your brand keeps showing up in high-quality content — and that content is clear, well-structured, and semantically relevant — you get pulled into more answers.

Whether GPT-5 now cites sources differently or not, it’s trained on the same core patterns, meaning:

Strong brands get surfaced more often.

If you want to future-proof your visibility:

• Publish content that earns mentions naturally
• Use clear product and brand language that LLMs can understand
• Strengthen your position in category-defining content

Want to know where you stand right now?

Use Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit to find out exactly how you fare against your competitors in terms of AI citations across Google AI Mode, SearchGPT, and Perplexity:

You’ll also see how often your brand is mentioned by these tools over time, so you can track the impact of your LLM optimization efforts:

4. Prompts Are the New Keywords

People don’t talk to LLMs like they search Google.

Instead of “best bed sheets,” they ask:

• “What are the comfiest bed sheets that don’t get too hot at night?”
• “I need high-quality sheets that won’t pill after a few washes. Any brand recs?”
• “What do hotels use for sheets, and can I buy something similar for home?”

The winners in ChatGPT-5 aren’t the ones who just rank in Google.

They’re the ones whose brand comes up when your ideal customer asks tools like ChatGPT a high-intent question.

Optimize for this by building a prompt library based on customer jobs-to-be-done.

Do this even faster with tools like Semrush’s AI SEO Toolkit. Just enter your domain name and head to the “Questions” tab.

Scroll down and you’ll see questions real customers in your industry are asking.

Create new content around these questions, and use them to optimize your existing content.

Then, use the “Visibility” tab to monitor your share of voice across not just ChatGPT, but also Google’s AI Mode, Perplexity, and Gemini:

How to Win With GPT-5

GPT-5 is faster, more accurate, and more powerful.

But it won’t change the underlying reality for marketers:

If your brand isn’t clear, trusted, and visible in high-quality content, you will be invisible in AI answers.

Learn more about what really matters in our guide to LLM visibility.

The post ChatGPT-5 Is Here: What Search Marketers Need to Know appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-08 00:34:45

LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are quickly becoming the first place people turn when researching brands, products, and services.

But most companies have no idea how they’re actually showing up.

That’s a huge blind spot — especially as AI-generated answers start shaping what people believe about your brand before they ever hit your site.

At Backlinko, we’ve already seen the shift.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors per month still come from organic search…

But LLM-driven traffic is up 800% year-over-year. And accelerating.

That’s why tracking your visibility in AI search matters. Because it’s not just about traffic anymore — it’s about presence, perception, and positioning.

So: what tools can actually help you do that?

I’ve tested more than a dozen. These are the five that stand out. The ones I trust right now for speed, scale, and signal.

Some are scrappy startups. Others are built for enterprise.

But every tool on this list does one thing well:

They help you see how your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and more.

Let’s break them down.

What to Look For in an LLM Tracking Tool

A lot of LLM tracking tools look impressive at first glance.

But once you dig in, many fall short — either because they’re built on a shaky foundation, limited scraping technology, or generic dashboards that miss what actually matters.

Here’s what to consider:

• Real scale: Thousands of prompts. From the UI, not just the APIs. Otherwise, you miss key results (like tables and maps).
• Multi-engine coverage: ChatGPT is table stakes. Top tools also track Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot.
• Actionable insights: Breakdowns by model, topic, sentiment. Bonus if it flags missed opportunities and quick wins.
• Roadmap momentum: Is the team shipping fast? If not, skip it.
• Global support: Need multi-language prompts or market-level insights? Not all tools can do it.
• Enterprise-ready: Solid support. Clean data policies. And a team that’s leading the space, not chasing it.

1. Semrush AIO

Semrush AIO isn’t like the other tools on this list.

Yes, it’s on the more expensive side.

But I also think it’s the most complete product on the market right now for tracking your brand across LLMs.

Why?

Because Semrush has something most others don’t: infrastructure and scale.

They’ve spent over a decade building one of the most robust search visibility platforms, and now they’re applying that to AI.

My favorite feature is the Competitor Rankings and Market Analysis. Once you have your prompts, and categories, dialed in, you can really get a detailed look at your visibility across all (or each individual) LLM that you track.

And then you can really start honing your strategy by focusing on the top-performing Source Domains and specific URLs.

Plans & Pricing

Enterprise pricing upon request. Request a demo here.

Semrush AI SEO Toolkit starts at $99/month per domain. It gives you a solid snapshot of how your brand shows up in AI responses — great for just getting started.

LLMs Covered

ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, Grok, Perplexity, Deepseek

Key Capabilities

• Real-time brand, product, and concept tracking
• Quote-level visibility and sentiment scoring
• Share of Voice metrics across platforms
• Platform-by-platform performance insights
• Workflow automation and optimization guidance
• Deep integrations with Semrush’s core platform for multi-channel visibility

2. Profound

Profound is one of the more interesting new companies in the space right now.

They launched in 2024 and in June 2025 raised a $20M seed round to go all-in on AI search.

The product looks great. It feels fast. And they’re shipping like crazy.

Prompt-level insights, platform-by-platform visibility, real crawl logs. There’s a lot to like.

But one thing to watch: Profound is still new.

They don’t have the infrastructure or track record of the bigger players (yet).

So while the pace of innovation is impressive, the long-term durability is something to keep in mind.

Plans & Pricing

Starts at $499/month for 200 prompts. Enterprise plans available.

LLMs Covered

Lite plan includes: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot. Enterprise plan includes Google AI Mode. And more on the horizon.

Key Capabilities

• Prompt-level tracking + AI-generated prompt suggestions
• Visibility and Share of Voice by topic, region, and platform
• Citation analysis with URLs, domains, and page-level stats
• Real-time LLM crawl and citation logs
• Conversation Explorer with topic-level ChatGPT demand
• “Actions” workspace for optimizing slugs, content, and targeting

3. ZipTie.Dev

ZipTie is one of the simplest tools on this list, and that’s exactly why it works.

There’s no bloat, no complex setup, and no sales process. You just plug in your brand and get visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.

It’s not built for teams that want deep prompt logic or workflow integrations.

But if you want fast answers, clean dashboards, and a dead-simple way to check how your brand is showing up in AI search, ZipTie gets the job done.

Great for early-stage teams or solo operators who want signal without complexity.

Plans & Pricing

Starts at $99/month (Basic plan with 400 AI search checks)

LLMs Covered

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews

Key Capabilities

• Tracks brand presence across top AI search engines
• Provides visibility and citation data in one view
• Includes prompt-based monitoring with simple tagging
• Export-friendly dashboard and fast onboarding
• Basic UI with just the essentials

4. Peec AI

Peec AI is one of the newest players in the LLM tracking space, founded in 2025 and backed by a €5.2M seed round.

The platform is built to monitor brand visibility and sentiment across major AI search engines while keeping the interface simple and focused.

You can track your active prompts:

And the top performing sources, to guide your strategy:

Plans & Pricing

• Starter: $89/month (25 prompts, 3-country coverage)
• Pro: $199/month(100 prompts, 5 countries)
• Enterprise: $499+/month (300+ prompts, 10+ countries)
• Add‑ons
  • GPT‑4 Search: $19–$49
  • Claude 4: $29–$159
  • Gemini Search Preview: $99–$499

LLMs Covered

Included: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews

Optional Add-ons: Claude 4, Gemini, GPT-4 (via SearchGPT plugin)

Key Capabilities

• Tracks brand mentions, sentiment, and visibility across top LLMs
• Clean, modern UI with prompt-level reporting and tagging
• Country-specific visibility insights (multi-language capable)
• Easy onboarding and export-friendly reports
• Modular pricing for expanding LLM coverage without overpaying

5. Gumshoe.AI

Gumshoe AI is in public beta — no clear pricing or enterprise polish yet.

But its approach? I’m super interested.

Unlike tools that start with prompts, Gumshoe starts with personas.

You define your audience — their roles, goals, and pain points — and Gumshoe reverse-engineers the kinds of prompts they’re likely to ask across AI chat tools.

The project setup flow is what really stands out.

You start by verifying your brand positioning. Then you choose one analysis focus area — usually your clearest product or service.

From there, Gumshoe builds a list of rich, realistic target personas. Not fluffy archetypes like “SaaS Sally” or “Paul the Plumber” — actual roles with meaningful intent.

Then it generates detailed, relevant prompts based on those personas and associated topic clusters.

This is (early-stage) structured AI search research, tied directly to how your audience thinks and searches.

Plans & Pricing

None announced yet.

LLMs Covered

Perplexity AI Sonar, Google Gemini 2.5 Flash, OpenAI 4o Mini, Anthropic Claude 3.5

Key Capabilities

• Persona-based prompt generation and tracking
• Visibility scoring by persona, topic, and LLM
• Citation source tracking across answers
• Topic visibility matrix for how your brand is mentioned by each persona for a given topic

Whichever Tool You Choose, Just Start Tracking

Whether you’re measuring it or not, users are discovering your competitors through AI interactions. So, it’s a good idea to have your finger on the pulse.

To get started, pick one tool, add 3-5 competitors, and track 10+ prompts about your products/services for 30 days. You’ll start seeing where you have opportunities.

Don’t expect overnight changes. This is like early-stage SEO — you’re building a foundation for long-term authority.

Once you have the data, what do you do next? Take a look at our guide on Generative Engine Optimization. We show you how to influence how LLMs mention and cite your brand.

The post 5 LLM Visibility Tools to Track Your Brand in AI Search (2025) appeared first on Backlinko.

2025-08-06 20:16:18

Last month, Abhishek Iyer ran a sharp experiment:

He created a brand-new nonsense term, got it indexed only in Google, and then asked ChatGPT about it.

ChatGPT returned a perfect summary — despite the fact that Bing had never seen the page.

That test got our attention.

So we ran our own.

We invented a new fake SEO term, NexorbalOptimization, published a dedicated page on Backlinko, and made sure only Googlebot could crawl it.

Then we waited.

The results confirmed what Abhishek — and a handful of others — have started to suspect:

ChatGPT Plus is using Google Search data. Not just Bing.

Here’s how we ran the test, what we found, and what this means for the future of AI search visibility.

Step 1: Create a Term That Doesn’t Exist

We made up a new SEO buzzword: NexorbalOptimization.

It had:

• Zero mentions online
• No search volume
• No overlap with real words, acronyms, or brand names

We built a new page on Backlinko with fake-but-professional sounding content explaining what “NexorbalOptimization” supposedly is.

Here’s the live URL: https://backlinko.com/nexorbaloptimization

Step 2: Let Google In (and Block Everyone Else)

Next, we updated our robots.txt file with the following:

# Allow Googlebot to access the specific page
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /nexorbaloptimization
# Block all other bots from that page only
User-agent: *
Disallow: /nexorbaloptimization

We also made sure this URL wasn’t included in our public sitemap.xml file.

That meant:

• Googlebot could crawl and index the page
• Bing, Perplexity, DuckDuckGo, Claude, and other bots were blocked
• The page was invisible to public crawlers and AI tools, unless they were using Google

We manually submitted the URL to Google Search Console and waited for indexing.

Step 3: Wait for Indexing, Then Ask ChatGPT

Once the page was live, it took a few hours to get indexed in Google:

We confirmed that it still wasn’t indexed in Bing:

Or DuckDuckGo:

Then, we tested a prompt in different LLMs / models:

What is nexorbaloptimization?

ChatGPT Plus (temporary chat, with web browsing) found our page and quoted it word-for-word:

ChatGPT Free (with web browsing, not logged in) couldn’t find anything:

Neither could Claude 4 Sonnet:

Interestingly, Perplexity was the only other one that managed to find it:

The Results

Only ChatGPT Plus and Perplexity’s Free plan returned a valid answer based on the Backlinko page.

All other models either:

• Returned nothing
• Said the term didn’t exist
• Or made something up without referencing the page

This confirmed two things:

1. Google was the only search engine that knew about the term
2. The AI responses reflected the exact phrasing, structure, and concepts from our made-up page

Why This Matters

There’s been speculation for months that ChatGPT specifically might be relying on more than just Bing.

OpenAI has an official partnership with Microsoft.

ChatGPT’s default browsing model is often described as using Bing.

But these experiments tell a different story.

Here’s what’s becoming increasingly clear:

1. ChatGPT Plus is indexing Google Search

Especially when other engines haven’t seen the page.

2. SEO visibility in Google directly influences AI answers

If your page doesn’t rank in Google, ChatGPT likely won’t “see” it — regardless of whether you rank in Bing or not.

3. Google is the trusted source of truth for LLMs

Not because it’s stated — but because it’s indexed faster, deeper, and more completely.

What This Means for SEO in the Age of AI

This test, and others like it, reveal something critical:

AI search visibility is becoming an extension of Google’s reliable index and search visibility.

You’re not just optimizing to appear in a SERP.

You’re optimizing to be pulled into a ChatGPT answer box.

Or a Perplexity paragraph.

Or a Gemini-generated comparison.

If Google doesn’t index you — many AI tools won’t surface you.

That makes indexation and crawl access even more strategic than before.

Why LLM Visibility Still Starts with Google (And How to Track It)

If you’re trying to understand where your brand shows up in AI-generated content, you need to start with a simple truth:

Google’s index is the foundation layer for most LLMs.

Even as tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity generate answers on the fly, they’re pulling from a mix of:

• Crawled web results (often from Google-indexed pages)
• Structured data
• High-authority brand mentions

If your content isn’t indexed — or isn’t ranking — it’s invisible to the most important LLMs.

That’s why traditional SEO fundamentals still matter:

• Crawlability
• Fast indexing
• Content structured for semantic clarity
• Owning your brand queries and product terms

Want to track your presence in AI tools?

You’ll need more than just a rank tracker.

Thinking Ahead

As LLMs become more influential in the discovery process, you’ll want to start tracking how your brand shows up across tools — not just in SERPs.

That means finding a tool (or set of tools) that:

• Can scale with your brand and content footprint
• Tracks citations, summaries, and AI-generated exposure
• Is transparent about what it’s monitoring and how

If you’re already using Semrush, their AI SEO Toolkit is a solid starting point.

For enterprise teams managing multiple properties or international markets, Semrush Enterprise AIO adds more depth.

Bottom line:

LLM visibility is a new surface area. And the earlier you start tracking it, the better positioned you’ll be to influence it.

Want to Run the Test Yourself?

1. Invent a fake phrase
2. Create a page with unique content
3. Submit to Google Search Console
4. Block all other bots via robots.txt
5. Wait for indexing
6. Prompt ChatGPT (Plus with browsing) with a simple question
7. See what it says

This kind of sting-test isn’t just clever — it’s revealing how the AI discovery layer is actually working.

Shoutout

Big credit to Abhishek Iyer for running the original experiment that sparked this.

You can read his breakdown here.

We just followed the trail — with a slightly sillier term.

The post ChatGPT Is Using Google Search – We Tested It appeared first on Backlinko.