Earlier this month, Matter hosted its first virtual AI Summit, “How to Be Visible in an AI World.” The webinar brought together a panel of experts—including Matter employees, partners, and customers—to explore and explain how PR, SEO (and now GEO), and content strategies are evolving to help brands stay visible, credible, and citable at a time when AI tools are causing significant changes across the entire digital landscape. Over the course of the hour-long discussion, moderator Tim Donovan (Seek Argus) and panelists Nic Azad (Parsec Automation), Wyatt Craig, Ethan Lyons, Shane Carley, and myself explored how organizations can earn visibility, authority, and trust in the modern media and search landscape.
We also conducted a number of polls throughout the presentation, and the results helped paint a clear picture of where most organizations stand today:
- Just 9% of respondents indicated that they have a fully implemented strategy to be visible to LLMs/AI agents (while 35% have “partially implemented” one).
- Exactly 0% said they “completely trust” AI search, while 73% said they “somewhat trust” it, underscoring the continuing need for verification and human oversight.
- An encouraging 52% indicated that their organization has clear AI usage guidelines, while 45% said they are actively working on it.
With this in mind, how can organizations effectively navigate a modern media and search environment where audiences get their answers without clicking a single link? Below, I’ll recap the most actionable advice from our discussion and highlight some practical moves you can make right now to help your organization get Results that Matter in an increasingly zero-click world.
1) Treat SEO and GEO as a “both/and” – not an “either/or.”
With AI search growing at a seemingly exponential rate, it can be tempting to dismiss traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices as obsolete and instead focus primarily on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). However, this would be a mistake. While it is critical to implement GEO practices to ensure your organization is mentioned in AI search results, this should be done alongside traditional SEO practices—not in place of them. Ultimately, GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO. It’s just an expansion.
What to Do:
- Continue with core SEO practices. This will ensure your owned pages are eligible to be cited or summarized in AI overviews.
- Layer in GEO techniques by monitoring (and improving) the external sources LLMs pull from, including review sites like G2 and Capterra, authoritative publications like Forbes or TechCrunch, community sources like Reddit, and high-signal profiles like LinkedIn.
- Build a “prompt-to-source” matrix for prompts your buyers commonly use, such as “best X for Y,” “compare A vs. B,” or “does X integrate with Y?” Identify which sources LLMs are citing most and raise your presence on those platforms.
Why It Works: AI overviews are compressing the web, reducing the number of places customers find information about your company. If you don’t have a strong presence on the sites LLMs trust, your brand won’t be part of the conversation.
2) Meet the buyer at the prompt.
Search behavior has changed significantly with the advent of AI assistants. Buyers are asking specific questions—which means organizations need to provide specific answers.
What to Do:
- Publish “answer-grade” content: concise, machine-readable blocks and answer a single question clearly. This makes it easier for AI to index and audiences to read.
- Add product specifications, integration matrices, validation claims, deployment patterns, and pricing and package clarity where possible, giving readers one easy place to find the information they need.
- Use structured data and clean markup while making content crawlable, semantically rich, and well labeled. FAQs, Q&A blocks, and comparison tables are all great options.
Why It Works: As Nic Azad said during our presentation, “if it isn’t structured, it isn’t seen. If it isn’t cited, it isn’t trusted.” The most verifiable information you can put into the world, the better your results are likely to be.
3) Build authority signals the way LLMs (and humans) recognize.
Authority is a force multiplier in a zero-click world. If you want your organization to be cited in AI overviews, your messaging and content needs to appear in authoritative locations, such as trusted publications or third-party review sites.
What to Do:
- Prioritize earned media and expert commentary in high-authority publications. This can include national news publications as well as widely read industry trades.
- Grow credible, third-party reviews and customer proof points. You can also address community feedback and concerns in an open and transparent way on social media sites like Reddit while also keeping FAQs updated and responsive to new information.
- Publish original studies, analysis, and data (not just summaries of existing information) to ensure your content is worth citing.
Why It Works: Both LLMs and human editors do their best to gauge both human experience and independent validation. A robust PR program is an important way to earn both.
4) Run content like a governed knowledge layer.
Nic described a powerful model that today’s organizations should embrace: a governed product knowledge layer that any AI assistant can reliably cite. By leveraging owned content in a strategic and thoughtful way, organizations can create a repository of useful and credible information.
What to Do:
- Maintain a single (regularly updated) source of truth for features, integrations, constraints, and reference architectures that customers and potential customers would find useful.
- Use hybrid retrieval techniques (semantic and keyword) internally to allow teams to answer configuration-level questions with precise, easily cited facts.
- Plan for callable functions (such as ROI estimators or integration lookups) that LLMs can reference. This allows you to turn your expertise into operational answers.
Why It Works: Ambiguity is the enemy. Specific and consistent information can increase citations and shorten evaluation cycles, helping customers make quicker, more informed decisions.
5) Let humans and AI do what they do best.
AI has made it easy to quickly create content—but that content tends to be generic, low-quality, and easily identifiable as AI generated. While generative AI tools are very good at gathering and summarizing information, they cannot produce original ideas, which makes them poorly suited for thought leadership. Ultimately, reporters and editors want a unique perspective informed by your specific experience and expertise. Attempting to pass off AI-generated content as your own risks damaging relationships with reporters and publications—something today’s businesses simply can’t afford.
What to Do:
- Use AI tools for research, summarization, note-taking, and other applications for which it is well-suited…but never use it to generate expert commentary or thought leadership content.
- Consider the E-E-A-T framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness are all factors that help content resonate with human audiences while also maximizing appeal to AI search engines.
- Be prepared for more live interviews that allow reporters to confirm that they are receiving the spokesperson’s original thoughts. Also, expect stricter AI disclosures on content portals for ongoing contributor opportunities.
Why It Works: AI can synthesize information, but it can’t think for itself. Your lived experience and hard-earned knowledge are the differentiators that both human reporters and LLM tools value.
6) Embrace the dark funnel (and measure what matters).
Clicks aren’t the only metric that matters, and fewer clicks doesn’t automatically mean less influence. While it’s true that a growing share of the buyer journey is taking place within LLM tools, there are ways to use that information to your advantage.
What to Do:
- Track assistant-referred traffic wherever you can, and add self-report fields to the website that can help better understand how customers arrived at their purchasing decision.
- Benchmark metrics like “share of citation” across your prompt-to-source matrix, not just individual sessions.
- It’s not enough to get eyes on your website. Tie programs to pipeline and win-rate lift, not just web visits.
Why It Works: Since buyers are conducting more research inside LLM interfaces, your content must be able to win in-assistant. That means your reporting needs to be adjusted to reflect that reality.
7) Put governance and transparency on rails.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it’s encouraging to see that almost every organization either has an AI policy in place or is actively working on one. As employees continue to explore different AI tools, these guidelines are a critical way to establish both responsible usage guidelines and much-needed accountability.
What to Do:
- Publish a clear AI Code of Conduct (both internally and client-facing) that covers specific tools, disclosure policies, consent practices, and approval paths.
- Disclose when an AI tool was used to assist research, analysis, or writing and always keep human ownership over final copy.
- Implement training programs and keep guidelines regularly updated. What worked six months ago may not work today. Rules must evolve alongside the technology.
Why It Works: Effective governance reduces fear, accelerates adoption, and protects both media and client relationships.
A PR-Forward Checklist for the Next 90 Days
Looking for practical steps to move your program in the right direction? Here are a few important steps you can accomplish in just three months that will help establish a solid foundation upon which to build your AI program:
- Map 5 buyer prompts to build your prompt-to-source matrix.
- Harden your owned content with FAQs, comparison pages, integration pages, and product specifications. Be sure to add scheme and internal links where appropriate.
- Raise authority by targeting 3-5 earned media placements in sources commonly cited by LLMs. Seed credible reviews where possible.
- Create an “Answer Library” with short, citable modules for the top 25 questions customers and prospects commonly ask.
- Establish (and publish) AI guidelines and train spokespeople on how to prioritize human-first thought leadership.
- Update KPIs to include share of citation, assistant-influenced leads, and win-rate impacts.
Final Thoughts
AI isn’t the end of SEO or PR. In fact, it’s just the opposite. AI is forcing PR professionals to be better and more intentional in how they operate. The brands that stand out will be those that combine search discipline, media craftsmanship, and credible proof points, packaged together so assistants can understand, cite, and recommend it.
If you’d like to take a deeper dive into some of these topics, watch the full AI Summit Recording or reach out! We’re always happy to help tailor a GEO-inclusive PR plan around your buyers, prompts, and goals.