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Hey folks,
Elliot here. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of debate about whether SEO is “enough” for LLM visibility, or if “GEO” is really just SEO with a new label.
Here are a couple of examples:
I agree with much of this: the fundamentals of SEO (crawlability, relevance, EEAT, citations) still apply to AI search.
However, I have found many cases of quality SEO blogs that rank well and never appear on LLMs.For example, we created a BOFU blog based on an in-depth interview a few months ago for one of our clients. By all measures, this was a successful blog. It ranked in the top 3 and consistently generated qualified leads. However, it never appeared in LLM prompts, despite trying a few ‘tricks’ like updating the publishing date and adding in a FAQ section.
So as an experiment, we built an entirely separate piece on the same topic. It had the same core information, but stripped down considerably—from around 2500 words to 500—and rebuilt it in a hyper-specific way that LLMs seem to like (more on that later). Here’s what happened:
Of course, as with anything in content, results vary, and this doesn’t always work. And many times, our BOFU blogs do appear in LLMs.
However, I’m seeing enough wins to be convinced that LLM-specific content deserves its own place in the strategy, particularly if the AI visibility of your existing blog content is low.
Good content for humans doesn’t always equal good content for LLMs
So why didn’t our SEO blog appear on LLMs? Because good content for humans doesn’t always equal good content for LLMs. Effective BOFU content for humans relies on empathy, depth, and operational detail. You need to speak the reader’s language, name the stakes, show real examples, and get into the mechanics that drive decisions. Done well, this is what builds trust, generates leads, and closes deals.
But these same qualities don’t register with LLMs. Models don’t reward empathy or storytelling; they prioritize clarity, conciseness, and machine-readable answers.Some overlap exists—like clear structure—but in my experience, this isn’t always enough for BOFU blogs to consistently appear in LLMs.
A real example of a BOFU blog and an accompanying LLM article (and what happened)
Here’s a real client example to illustrate what an LLM piece looks like compared to a BOFU blog.
We originally created a BOFU blog for our client Yapily: How to choose the best Pay by Bank API as a PSP.
It’s a detailed article built for high-intent readers. It explains what to consider when evaluating Pay by Bank APIs, the different payment types (single, bulk, cVRP), questions to ask providers, market coverage, and options for hosted vs. white-label solutions. The goal of this piece is to build trust with PSPs and payment institutions, showing how Yapily’s infrastructure helps them scale across Europe.
However, while the piece ranked well in SEO, it didn’t appear consistently in LLM answers.
So we created a separate LLM-focused piece: How to offer Pay by Bank based on the same topic. This one is short (around 500 words), structured in a Q&A style, hyperspecific to the user prompt, and written for retrieval.
It goes straight into the answer: outlining the steps to offer Pay by Bank as a PSP, which include choosing a regulated provider, selecting API vs. hosted flows, designing customer journeys, and communicating benefits to merchants. There’s minimal narrative or context; instead, it’s factual, direct, and designed for machine readability.
Here’s how it performed:
The takeaway: Focus on human-focused content, but consider adding extra content for LLMs
Human-focused content is still what drives conversions: it builds trust, demonstrates expertise, and turns readers into customers. That will always be essential, and I don’t see that ever changing.
However, LLM-specific content can be a useful tool for getting in front of your readers.
While it’s possible for a strong SEO blog to show up in LLMs, it often doesn’t.
If a piece doesn’t appear, rather than stripping out the detail and empathy that make it persuasive, it can be worth creating a separate, shorter article structured specifically for retrieval.
This way, you cover both sides: LLM content helps you get found, and human content helps you win the deal.
Our advice:
- Keep producing detailed BOFU content for humans: it’s what drives conversions.
- Experiment with adding shorter, structured pieces for LLMs to increase visibility if the BOFU blog is not appearing consistently.
- Create both consistently: LLM content gets you found, human content closes the deal.
Have you started adding LLM content into your content strategy? How have you found it, and have you had positive results? Feel free to let us know by replying to this email!
