Hey folks, Elliot here.
Today, I want to talk about what to do when your brand’s website is simply too new for SEO content to work effectively.
At this stage, you can publish genuinely great content and still not rank for important keywords.
The main reason for this is low Domain Authority (DA). This is a score from 0 to 100 created by SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush that reflects how much trust search engines have built up in your website over time (a brand new site will start close to 0).
That trust comes from factors like how many reputable sites link to you, how long your domain has existed, and the history of content you’ve published.
There’s no real shortcut here (and it’s for the best: otherwise, anyone with a ChatGPT Plus subscription and a free afternoon could create a website and outrank trusted brands)!
Increasing DA just comes down to consistently creating good content and generating backlinks over time.
But this creates a frustrating cycle for marketers trying to build an inbound channel on a tight budget:
- SEO isn’t working yet because your DA is too low for you to rank for critical buying keywords
- You can’t prove the value of content, so you can’t get budget approved
- Your DA never really improves because you’re not creating content
- But you’re still under pressure to deliver results, so you invest in fast-acting (but expensive) channels like paid ads
- This works in the short-term…but it’s a money pit, and you never develop a strong stream of inbound leads from content
So how can you break out of this cycle and build consistent pipeline through content?
My argument: instead of chasing ambitious SEO rankings right away and over-relying on paid ads, start by creating content that increases your visibility in LLMs.
Here are three reasons why:
1. You can see results from LLM visibility much faster than SEO (especially if your DA is low)
An SEO blog on a good website can take months to rank. On a newer website, it could take even longer.
LLMs are faster than Google because they’re always looking for up-to-date, relevant information and DA is not a factor (yet). I often see published GPT articles (our content framework for improving LLM visibility) being cited on LLMs literally the same day (the fastest I’ve seen is 1 hour after), although your mileage may vary.
While being cited on LLMs doesn’t equate to a lead, it’s a pretty powerful shove in the right direction. How many of your prospects are using tools like ChatGPT or Claude to research solutions? I’d bet most of them are using LLMs at some point. You can track LLM visibility using a tool like Peec.AI or Profound (keep reading for an example).
This results in compelling evidence for leadership, which you can deliver to them fast.
Wondering how you can create content to improve LLM visibility? We go into our process, which we’re calling GPT articles, here: Want LLMs to Recommend Your Brand? Here's What We've Found Works: GPT Articles
2. Creating content for LLMs requires a lot fewer resources
I am a firm believer in the value of in-depth, long-form blog content (and we’ve even found that longer blogs have better conversion rates than shorter ones). However, they are not easy to create.
Our process typically involves interviewing an SME, having our writers complete a detailed questionnaire, and then working through several drafts. This takes time and effort, but it results in deep, high-quality content designed to rank and convert.
Because GPT articles are written to answer very specific questions, they can be much shorter than traditional SEO blogs. Unlike search engines, LLMs don’t prioritise length. They prioritise clarity and relevance to the prompt.
That means these articles don’t need to cover a topic extensively. Instead, they focus on delivering a clear and direct answer to a narrowly defined question.
Crucially, though, this does not mean the content should be lower quality. The best GPT articles still draw on real expertise, whether that comes from SME insights or quotes, internal knowledge, or ideas taken from deeper BOFU content.
Here’s a published example I can share with you to show the differences:
- Payments for field service: A guide for SaaS platforms: This is a BOFU piece and is based on an interview with the founder. Our target reader here is vertical SaaS platforms that serve field services.
- What is the best embedded payment solution for field-service SaaS platforms?: This is a GPT article on a similar topic. You can see it has the essence of the BOFU piece, but with a comparison element and a lot less detail.
Because it’s more specific and relevant, the GPT article appears on LLMs while the long-form blog doesn’t. As they’re shorter, they’re easier to create, meaning you can get more bang for your buck compared to SEO blogs, especially if you’re working with a small budget and your DA is too low for blogs to rank.
3. Regularly publishing decent-quality articles will improve your domain authority over time
The beauty of creating content for LLMs – even when your focus is on LLM visibility – is that your DA will start to increase over time.
Every article you publish is a signal to search engines that your site is active, growing, and worth paying attention to. Over time, that consistent output starts to move the needle on DA (especially if you invest in building backlinks to your website at the same time).
So by the time you're ready to invest seriously in long-form SEO content, you're no longer starting from zero: your DA has a foundation, your domain has history, and those high-intent buying keywords that felt completely out of reach six months ago are suddenly a lot more realistic.
A real example: How prioritising LLM visibility can generate inbound leads for a low DA website
Ok, so this sounds good in theory, but does it actually work? It does, and I have the perfect client to demonstrate it.
We’ve worked with this client for a few years now. They completed our diagnostic process, and we felt that their website was too young to really justify an SEO approach: their domain rating was low. We told this client that SEO would take a long time to be effective. They agreed to that, so we started publishing.
Soon after, we started to experiment with creating content specifically to improve LLM visibility, while consistently publishing and building backlinks to improve the website's DA.
The results were genuinely pretty incredible. Firstly, LLM visibility has grown exponentially: here’s what the graph looks like on Peec.AI
And we know it’s because of the content we created, because we can see our GPT articles being cited.
We also saw our total leads increase, mostly due to AI visibility. For example, on our highest spend Google Ads month, we brought in a decent quantity of leads, but only two qualified opportunities. This is because we were operating in a market where competitors have extremely deep pockets.
But just six months later, in December 2025, we brought in 11 qualified opportunities with no PPC investment. While this might not sound like a huge amount, a qualified opportunity for this client can be worth over $100,000.
What’s more, around half of these inbounds mentioned that they found us using AI tools.
And for the cherry on top, the client's domain rating has grown from 10 to 20 in just one year. This has enabled us to rank for much better buying keywords, meaning our BOFU SEO strategy is now effective.
We’ll be releasing a case study on this client soon, so keep your eyes peeled on your inbox!
How to improve LLM visibility with content: create GPT articles
As you can see from the example above, prioritising LLM visibility can be a powerful strategy, especially if your DA is low and traditional SEO is slow to gain traction.
So how do you actually do it? For us, the answer has been creating what we call GPT articles.
Unlike traditional SEO blogs, GPT articles are concise, factual, and structured to directly answer one specific prompt per article.
Instead of storytelling or broad keyword targeting, they prioritise clarity, tables, FAQs, and precise answers, making them easier for LLMs to understand, cite, and recommend.
Crucially, we are not proposing creating hundreds of AI-generated articles answering random questions. GPT articles are still good quality content, simply designed to answer very specific (but relevant) questions. While they can be AI-assisted, they should not be fully AI-generated.
You can read more about how we create them and the results we've brought in so far here: Want LLMs to Recommend Your Brand? Here's What We've Found Works: GPT Articles
Mint Studios Recommended Reads
- Does increased LLM visibility lead to more customers? Here's what we found via 3 case studies
- Why You Should Track Topics, Not Prompts (Especially in the Age of AI)
- From Prompt to Purchase: How B2B decision-makers buy in the LLM era
Thanks for reading,
Elliot & the Mint team
We help financial services and fintech companies acquire customers and position themselves as experts with content marketing. Learn more about what we do.
