Insights from BrightonSEO San Diego: The Future of SEO and the Role of LLMs

BrightonSEO San Diego has been an amazing personal experience and a treasure trove of insights into the evolving world of SEO and search technologies. From brand-entity optimization to leveraging LLMs for content strategies, the conversations at the event underscored how marketers need to adapt to shifting paradigms in search behavior and technology. Here’s what I learned and how it will shape our approach at WordLift.

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Key Takeaways

1. The Importance of Brand-Entity Optimization

In today’s omnichannel world, optimizing for brand entities is no longer optional—it’s essential. As Marcus Tober highlighted, platforms like Reddit are pivotal for brands like Cloudflare, helping them not only answer user queries but also secure top spots on search engines for those questions. This integration of brand presence across forums, structured data, and search results is a perfect example of brand-entity optimization at work.

The challenge lies in converting entities in a knowledge graph into features or entities recognized by language models. Achieving this requires monosemanticity, a term I’ll explore further in an upcoming article. Simply put, monosemanticity ensures that entities are uniquely identifiable, both for humans and machines—a cornerstone for successful brand-entity optimization. The brilliant Crystal Carter in a recent blog (SEO for brand visibility in LLMs) post wrote:

“Entities form a core component of LLM training and that brands with robust entities will have high visibility within LLMs” — Crystal Carter

Fabrice Canel’s presentation on the Bing ecosystem highlighted also quite interestingly that not all clicks are created equal. AI-driven clicks, while fewer in number, lead to much higher engagement and conversion rates compared to traditional search. This shift requires a deeper focus on building meaningful connections between entities, as those connections are what truly drive value in AI-optimized search experiences.

Here’s an example of how brand-entity optimization can help your brand be discovered on Google for key search intents, such as “AI-powered SEO tools” for a solution like WordLift.

2. Creating LLM-Friendly Content

The era of “write-for-humans-first” is evolving into “write-for-humans-and-algorithms-equally.” Large Language Models (LLMs) thrive on structured, precise, and rich content (see Marcus’ example on why brands shall invest on Reddit). Discussions with the always insightful Mike King, Jordan Koene, and Martha van Berkel reaffirmed that creating content tailored for algorithmic audiences—whether through structured data or topic clusters—is no longer optional; it’s a tactical necessity. Mike argued that Google remains well-positioned to lead the pack, though this could change if government efforts to break up the company succeed.

This is where llms.txt comes into play—a proposal to help LLMs better understand websites. Much like robots.txt helps search engine crawlers, llms.txt is a markdown file that provides brief, structured background information and guidance specifically for language models. WordLift has already adopted this standard, as we recognize its potential to bridge the gap between our content and LLMs. Think of it as a way to create an AI-friendly “map” for your brand’s identity and offerings.

Marcus Tober’s projection that ChatGPT could rival Google’s dominance in four years—driven by a 13% month-over-month growth rate—further underscores the urgency of creating content that resonates with LLMs. Structured content isn’t just an advantage; it’s becoming a necessity.

It was incredibly exciting to finally meet Fabrice Canel in person and discuss Bing’s data ingestion pipeline, the significance of IndexNow, and how to leverage it to optimize traffic for news content.

Thanks Fabrice for the insightful conversation we had.

3. KPIs Need a Revamp: Follow the Money, Not the Clicks

With generative AI driving an estimated 50% reduction in organic search traffic by 2028 (as per Gartner), the SEO community faces a critical question: Are we still optimizing for 2023’s metrics in 2024? The short answer is that we shouldn’t be.

Will Reynolds’ session drove home the importance of rethinking metrics. Love this slide by the way 😉. 

Traditional KPIs like rank and CTR are becoming less effective measures of success in an environment increasingly influenced by AI and generative search experiences. Instead, marketers must shift their focus to insights that capture visibility and impact within AI-assisted search. Some of Will’s proposed metrics include:

• Query word count trends: Analyzing paid search query data to understand shifts in user behavior, particularly as users adopt more conversational and detailed queries in generative search.
• Chat visibility tracking: Using tools like Google Sheets and ChatGPT to measure a brand’s presence in AI-generated answers and conversational interfaces.
• Market share in chat search: Gauging competitor visibility in AI-assisted search environments to identify opportunities and threats.

We cannot wait for search engines to provide data on these metrics; instead, we must innovate and experiment with proxies and tools to stay ahead. For example, tracking changes in query length or using automated workflows to scale visibility tracking in chat search are immediate steps we can take.

That said, Google is not going away. Rand Fishkin’s closing remarks emphasized this point: while the landscape is shifting, traditional search engines still dominate the scene. As Datos’s latest data shows, Google continues to drive the lion’s share of clicks, and generative AI has not yet changed the overall landscape in any dramatic way. However, this balance could eventually tilt, especially if external pressures—like the DOJ’s efforts to break up Google and address its unfair distributional advantage—gain traction.

The challenge for SEOs lies in navigating this transitional period. While Google remains dominant, the shift toward AI-driven search behavior is inevitable. This means search marketers must optimize for both current realities and future possibilities. By aligning with new metrics and preparing for a post-Google-dominated world, we can ensure continued relevance and success.

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Looking Ahead and Personal Notes

BrightonSEO reinforced my belief that SEO is at a crossroads. With the rise of LLMs and generative AI, the tactics of yesterday will not suffice. At WordLift, we’re doubling down on:

• Data Modeling: Ensuring our knowledge graphs enable monosemanticity for seamless integration with LLMs. 
• Content Modeling: Focusing on the right meaningful concepts also referred to as features to be associated with our brand-entity. This is meant to both evaluate and facilitate the understanding of our entities by LLMs.
• Dynamic Content Creation: Crafting content that satisfies both human readers and algorithmic audiences across the customer journey.
• Forward-Thinking Metrics: Developing new ways to measure visibility and impact in a generative AI-driven world. SEO is about driving business impact, not traffic.

In the words of Mike King: “Visibility is just the start. Impact is the end game.” The SEO community’s ability to adapt will define its relevance in this new era. 

A heartfelt thank-you goes out to all the amazing friends I had the pleasure of meeting during the hectic two days of the conference. In no particular order: Steve Wiidman, Michael King, Martha van Berkel, Chris Shin & Jeff Preston (special thanks to both for the time we spent together), William Sears, Tom LeBaron, Michele Robbins, Cindy Krum, Eric Wu, Jackie Chu, George Nguyen, Noah Learner, Ray Grieselhuber, Michael Bonfils (whom I first met in San Diego after hearing so much about), Kristine Schachinger, Cameron Taylor and the many others that I might have forget to mention. 

I am also incredibly grateful to our fantastic team. Bravissima Silvia Fratini for putting up with both David Riccitelli and myself! It was, of course, great fun working with David last minute to finalize Agent WordLift’s upcoming Chrome extension and seeing how it helps optimize for Google’s AIO. That was truly a blast! It was equally refreshing to hear so many people stopping by our booth and saying, “This is exactly what I need!“. 

A special thank-you goes to our US team and Armando Biondi, whom we had the pleasure of meeting in New York. His support is inspiring us to dream big as we venture into this incredible new market.