Rethinking Content Strategy for LLMs

Rethinking Content Strategy for LLMs

Non-linear journey down the customer journey funnel, where large language models (LLMs) show up.

AI-driven search platforms, such as Google’s AI overviews and Microsoft Bing’s AI-powered results, are redefining how users find information, moving from keyword-based ranking to dynamic, AI-generated answers. Meanwhile, LLMs, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, are powering these systems by synthesizing a vast amount of data to provide conversational, non-deterministic responses.

Ultimately, brands adapting to how AI retrieves, interprets, and generates information could increase their long-term visibility, while those that don’t risk losing a critical new traffic source.

Large language models (LLMs) are deep learning models trained on immense amounts of data, making them capable of understanding and generating natural language and other types of content for performing a wide range of tasks. LLMs work as giant statistical prediction machines that repeatedly predict the next word in a sequence, learning patterns in their text and generate language that follows those patterns.

Where traditional search engines and other programmed systems used algorithms to match keywords, LLMs capture deeper context, nuance and reasoning.

LLMs are easily accessible to the public through interfaces like Anthropic’s Claude, Open AI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta’s Llama models, and Google’s Gemini assistant, along with its BERT and PaLM models.

Pretraining large language models

Data scientists oversee cleaning and pre-processing to remove errors, duplication and undesirable content. LLMs are initially trained with self-supervised learning, a machine learning technique that uses unlabeled data for supervised learning.

Though there is an extreme amount of noise and buzz and advice out there on social media for rethinking your strategy due to LLMs, don’t rush into overhauling your strategy, as this thing is very, very far from settled.

For instance, AI Mode is still not in traditional search results. When Google moves the AI Mode tab from being a tab into the main search results, the whole ecosystem is set for another upheaval, whatever that looks like, because we don’t actually know what that would look like.

Traffic expectations from LLMs

Citations and traffic

Mentions are the main thing.

ChatGPT, specifically, is not built for citations or to offer traffic; rather, it is built for providing answers and to be interactive. You usually don’t get a citation in ChatGPT until the third, fourth, or fifth prompt, whatever it is.

Other LLMs, such as AI Mode or Perplexity, are a little bit more citation or link-based, and still, their main commodity is the output, which gives you the answer and ability to explore further.

Brands' mention is far more important than the actual citation, per se. Also, the citation might just be the source of information.

Importance of Synergy and Context with Content

To be successful with LLMs, it's not that the top citations are just the ones that already do well on Google. Not necessarily. But there might be a correlation, but not causation. LLMs are trying to synthesize the web to serve as a proxy for the entire web.

So, what happens with your content across the web matters way more: How your content is talked about, where it’s talked about, who’s talking about it, and how often.

You need to give the LLM the brand context to realize that you have a digital presence in this area, that you’re someone worth mentioning or citing.

Mentions tend to carry more weight in this context.

Conducting An Audit

Running an audit helps you see how the LLM is treating your brand and your market.  

• How your content aligns with user intent in conversational queries
• Whether your pages are cited (or could be cited) in LLM responses
• If you’re sending the right signals for trust, originality, and relevance
• And yes, whether your formatting is machine-readable or a hot mess

Auditing content for LLM visibility helps you future-proof your site, protect your brand’s share of voice, and stay ahead of generative SEO trends.

Shaping What LLMs Say About Your Brand

It’s about: What do you want people to say about your brand?

The only way to do that is to have a very strong, focused, and conscious brand identity.

Brand identity is what gives your brand focus, giving your content marketing focus, your SEO strategy focus, your audience targeting focus, and your everything focus.

If you want third-party sites and people around the web to pick up who you are and what you’re about, to build that presence, you need a very conscious and meaningful understanding of who you are and what you do. That way, you know where to focus, where not to, what content to create, what not to, and how to reinforce the idea around the web that you are X and relevant for X.

Final Thoughts on Rethinking Content Strategy for LLMs

LLMs are shifting how your customers find information about your brands. Chasing citations and clicks isn’t a solid strategy.

Chaos in AI and search in the age of LLMs, marketers need to stick to the fundamentals: brand identity, trust, and relevance.

Focus on brand identity for building reputation, allowing users and search engines to recognize your brand as an authority in your niche.