Found by people.
Found by AI.
SEO that's built for how search actually works now, not how it worked in 2022. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are already answering a large share of searches before anyone clicks a link. Discoverability is about making sure your business is the source those answers come from, alongside the traditional rankings work that still matters.
Why this isn't the SEO you remember
Search has split into two audiences: people, and the AI systems now answering questions on their behalf. Optimising for one used to mean optimising for both. It doesn't any more.
A few tactics that used to move the needle are quietly retired here:
- Blog comments for backlinks. Google names these directly as a spam vector now, not a link building tactic.
- Keyword stuffing. AI systems and modern search read meaning and entities, not repetition.
- Chasing one keyword. Ranking for a single term matters less than being the trusted source across a whole topic.
- Domain Authority score. A third-party metric Google has never used. Fine as a rough gauge, useless as a target.
- Buying links without disclosure. Paid links that aren't marked as such are a policy violation, and Google's own systems now quietly strip their value rather than issue a visible penalty, which makes the problem harder to spot and impossible to reverse.
None of that work disappears. It gets replaced with something that holds up.
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01
Original Data & Research
The foundation. A proprietary study, survey or dataset gives journalists something to link to, gives AI systems something to cite, and gives your content genuine depth instead of another rewritten explainer.
- Original surveys, studies or datasets
- Content built to be cited, not just read
- A linkable asset PR and outreach can point to
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02
Digital PR & Earned Links
Links earned through coverage and original research, not bought. This is where backlinks come from now: journalists, industry sites and niche publications linking because there's something worth linking to.
- Outreach built around your original research
- Earned coverage, properly disclosed where paid
- No link schemes, no PBNs, no disavow clean-up later
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03
Topical Authority
Depth across a subject beats a single ranked keyword. Content is planned as a cluster covering a topic properly, so both Google and AI systems recognise your site as the trusted source on it.
- Content mapped by topic, not by keyword list
- Entity and subject coverage, not isolated pages
- Internal linking that reinforces the whole cluster
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04
AI Search Compatibility
Structured so AI systems can parse it, trust it, and quote it. This covers Google's AI Overviews as much as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, which increasingly decide what gets recommended before a person ever reaches a search results page.
- Clear entity definitions and structured data
- FAQ and Q&A schema where it fits naturally
- Content written to be extracted cleanly, not just indexed
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05
The 100-Word Answer
Every page answers its core question in the first hundred words, in plain language, before anything else. AI systems summarise fast and reward content that gets to the point early rather than burying the answer under introduction.
- Direct answer up top, detail after
- Written for people first, which happens to suit AI extraction too
- No padding to hit a word count
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06
Page Speed as AI Access
Not a vanity score any more. A slow or poorly structured page can fail to enter the AI retrieval pool entirely, regardless of how good the content is. Speed here is the price of being considered at all.
- Core Web Vitals tuned properly, not just a green tick
- Clean, lightweight builds (no bloated plugin stacks)
- Technical structure that AI crawlers can actually parse
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07
Reviews & Trust Signals
Genuine reviews, properly marked up, feed directly into how both Google and AI systems judge whether a source is trustworthy enough to recommend.
- Review schema implemented correctly
- Encouragement of real reviews, never manufactured ones
- Trust signals tied back into the rest of the site's structure
How a Discoverability project runs
Audit
A proper look at where you stand now: technical health, content coverage, existing links, AI visibility, and where the current approach is falling short.
Strategy
A topic and content plan built around your strongest original material, mapped against what search and AI systems are actually rewarding.
Build-out
Content written, technical fixes made, schema and structure put in place, outreach and PR work started.
Monitor
Ongoing tracking of rankings, AI citations and referral traffic, with adjustments as the search landscape moves, and it will keep moving.