10 SEO best practices for Google and AI search

SEO best practices are repeatable methods that help search engines and AI systems access, understand, trust, and surface your content. 

They fall into three layers: the foundation that gets your content into the running, the signals that give search engines and AI systems a reason to choose you, and the work of adapting to new search behavior and measuring what happens.

This post will cover 10 best practices you can introduce into your SEO workflows to improve your brand’s search and AI visibility.

What counts as an SEO best practice in 2026?

An SEO best practice is a repeatable method that helps search engines and AI systems access, understand, trust, and surface your content.

SEO now influences more discovery surfaces than it used to. Alongside Google results, people can encounter brands through AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, voice assistants, recommendation systems, and, increasingly, AI agents.

But that doesn’t mean the foundations of SEO have disappeared.

Search intent still matters. So do useful content, technical accessibility, expertise, authority, and trust.

The difference is that these fundamentals are now being evaluated and reused by more systems at once.

And simply following them doesn’t guarantee visibility.

There’s no technical setting that substitutes for useful content. Publishing hundreds of thin pages doesn’t automatically beat a smaller collection of useful ones. And making a page crawlable doesn’t give Google or an AI platform a reason to recommend it.

What earns the ranking, mention, or citation is usually what you build on top of the basics, such as original evidence, stronger expertise, better coverage of the user’s task, and recognition from sources beyond your own site.

SEO best practices

The 10 SEO best practices in this guide fall into three layers:

• Build the foundation: Match search intent, develop topical authority, structure content clearly, remove technical barriers, and optimize images. These practices help your content qualify to compete.
• Give systems a reason to choose you: Demonstrate real expertise, publish original evidence, and build recognition beyond your own website. These are the signals that can help earn rankings, mentions, links, and citations.
• Adapt and measure: Make your site easier for AI agents to use, then track visibility across both Google and AI platforms

The first layer is the entry requirement. A crawlable, well-structured, relevant page still isn't guaranteed visibility. The second and third layers give search engines and AI systems stronger reasons to choose, cite, and surface your content.

1. Understand what your audience wants

To earn visibility in search and AI results, your content needs to match what people are actually trying to accomplish.

This is search intent, the goal behind a query or prompt.

For example, someone searching for “best SEO tools” likely wants to compare products before choosing one. To check the intent, first look at the search results on Google and assess what searchers expect to see:

Then compare those results to the results given by an AI tool like ChatGPT:

We’ve confirmed that this particular keyword has commercial intent: the searcher wants to research products before buying. 

Start with keyword research to find what your audience searches for and how often. Enter a broad topic into the Keyword Magic Tool, then look for terms with real search volume and a difficulty score your site can compete at.

Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool can also help you identify keyword intent.

And the Prompt Research tool can reveal the search intent for topics and prompts used across AI platforms.

But intent is more than a label like “commercial” or “informational.” 

Think about the complete task behind the search, including:

• The questions users want answered
• The information and format they expect
• The criteria they use to make a decision
• Likely follow-up questions

You can gather these insights from People Also Ask results, communities, reviews, support tickets, and customer conversations. These often surface needs and language that keyword data misses.

Write for how people ask AI 

Queries typed into Google tend to be short. Someone might type "best CRM small business." The same person might ask ChatGPT, "What's a good CRM for a growing business that's easy to use and doesn't cost a fortune?"

The longer version tells you what they care about: price, ease of use, and room to grow. Build those details into the page. Write the way your audience talks, and review Reddit threads, sales calls, and AI prompt data to see how they describe the problem in their own words.

Finally, give each page one clear primary intent.

That doesn’t mean creating a separate page for every keyword variation. Closely related terms like “SEO best practices,” “best SEO practices,” and “best practices for SEO” can usually be covered together if they serve the same underlying need.

Prioritize satisfying the task, not matching keywords one by one.

2. Focus on topical authority

Topical authority comes from covering an important subject deeply across a group of useful, connected pages. It can help search engines and AI systems recognize your site as a credible source on topics relevant to your business.

Google’s December 2025 core update seems to reward topical authority. "This [update] is yet another iteration to reward specialization, expertise and showcase more commercially oriented content from brands or specialized retailers, rather than generic ecommerce platforms or publications,” says SEO expert Aleyda Solís.

A common way to build topical authority is with topic clusters.

For example, Trello has become a leading authority on project management. You can see this when you enter “project management” and their domain (“trello.com”) in Keyword Overview.

To build topical authority, first pick a core topic related to your business. For Trello, one of their core topics is how to manage a remote workforce to help build your company.

Next, create a pillar page (main page) that gives a broad overview of the topic. Trello created this pillar page, which links out to subtopics about remote work tools and best practices. 

Then, write supporting cluster pages (subpages) that cover related subtopics. And consider whether your website allows you to nest URLs to further clarify the structure, as Trello does. 

For example, the URL for Trello’s pillar page is “trello.com/guide/remote-work,” while the subpages have URLs like “trello.com/guide/remote-work/communication-collaboration.”

Next, use internal links to connect your pillar page and cluster pages to help readers, search engines, and AI tools navigate your content and understand how it’s related.

Trello’s remote work page links out to each of the subpages, and each of the subpages links back to the main remote work guide. Think of it like a book with links to each of its chapters.

Finally, regularly update your content with new insights, data, and examples to show Google and AI systems that it remains relevant. Trello updates its remote work pillar page and subpages about every year.

Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder can also help you identify related keyword clusters and plan pillar and supporting pages.

The goal isn’t to cover every keyword in a category. It’s to build enough useful depth that your site becomes a credible resource on the topics that matter to your audience and business.

Refresh and improve existing content

Building topical authority doesn’t always mean publishing more content. Often, you can get more value by improving pages that already have some visibility or authority.

Start with pages already earning:

• Search impressions or rankings
• Organic traffic
• Backlinks or brand mentions
• AI mentions or citations

You can identify these pages in the Top Pages report.

These pages have already shown that search engines, AI systems, or other websites see some value in them, which makes them strong candidates for improvement.

Next, look for ways to make each page meaningfully better, such as:

• Updating outdated advice or examples
• Expanding weak or incomplete sections
• Adding missing examples, evidence, or firsthand experience
• Supporting claims with stronger sources
• Filling gaps in intent coverage
• Strengthening internal links to and from related pages

Simply changing the publication date or making minor wording edits isn’t a real content refresh.

3. Structure content so search and AI systems can extract it

Clear structure makes your content easier for readers to scan and helps search engines and AI systems identify useful passages to surface in their results.

Start with the basic on-page SEO signals. Include your primary keyword naturally in the title tag, H1, and meta description, and make sure each one accurately reflects the page’s topic and search intent. Your title tag and H1 don’t need to match word for word, and the meta description isn’t a direct ranking factor, but all three should make it immediately clear what the page is about.

Our on-page SEO checklist covers the rest.

Within the content itself, use descriptive headings that clearly explain what each section covers. Then answer the heading directly, ideally in the first sentence or paragraph.

You can also make content easier to understand and extract by:

• Keeping paragraphs relatively short and focused on one idea
• Using lists for steps, examples, or grouped information
• Using tables when readers need to compare options
• Defining unfamiliar terms clearly
• Breaking long sections into useful subheadings
• Keeping important claims understandable without relying heavily on surrounding paragraphs

That last point is particularly useful for AI search.

Our content optimization study supports this. Pages cited by AI scored about 33% higher on clarity and summarization than pages that only ranked in Google, 25% higher on Q&A formatting, and 23% higher on section structure.

AI systems often retrieve or quote individual passages rather than reproducing an entire page. An important statement should therefore make sense when taken out of its original context.

For example, “It can improve visibility” is difficult to interpret on its own. “Building topical authority can improve search visibility” is more self-contained.

Think of this as making your content quotable rather than simply adding more formatting.

Making content easy to extract is half the job. If dozens of pages give the same answer, search engines and AI systems still need a reason to choose yours. Practices 6-8 cover how to give them one.

4. Do technical SEO, including AI crawler access

Technical SEO is essential because content can’t earn visibility if search systems can’t reliably access and process it. It also helps AI agents navigate your site, interpret key elements, and complete actions reliably on a user’s behalf.

Before diagnosing rankings or traffic, confirm that important pages are actually indexed. You can get a fast technical read on a page with our free SEO checker.

Then check for issues such as:

• Crawl blocks or accidental noindex directives
• Incorrect canonicals
• Broken links and redirect chains
• XML sitemap problems
• Poor mobile usability or page performance
• Important content that depends on JavaScript to render

Semrush’s Site Audit can surface these issues across your site and prioritize what to fix.

Work through our technical SEO checklist for the full list.

Technical SEO is a prerequisite for visibility, not a substitute for useful content or authority. A perfectly crawlable page can still fail if it doesn’t satisfy intent or offer anything worth surfacing.

Manage AI crawler access

AI platforms use different user agents for different purposes. Search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and Claude-SearchBot are used to retrieve content for search experiences, while training crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot may be used to collect data for model training. You can manage access for each separately through robots.txt.

If AI search visibility matters to you, check that you aren’t unintentionally blocking the search crawlers you want to access your site.

Semrush’s Blocked from AI Search report in Site Audit shows which AI bots are restricted and which pages may be affected.

Should you use llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposed standard for giving AI agents a concise, machine-friendly overview of a site and links to useful resources. 

It can be worth testing, particularly for documentation-heavy sites, but treat it as supplementary. It doesn’t replace crawlability, indexing, internal links, or strong content.

Use structured data where it clarifies meaning

Structured data and schema markup can help search engines understand entities and content types more explicitly.

For instance, you can connect each blog post to a core topic, custom images you’ve created, your brand, your subject matter experts, and more. 

In our content optimization study, pages cited by AI scored about 22% higher on structured data elements than pages that only ranked in Google.

Encoding these relationships can help search platforms better understand the context of your website. 

Use relevant markup such as Organization, Person, Article, Product, Review, Breadcrumb, or LocalBusiness where it accurately describes the page.

You can test schema markup with Google’s Rich Results Test.

Treat schema as clarification, not a ranking shortcut. While it can make pages eligible for certain search features, it doesn’t guarantee higher rankings or visibility.

5. Optimize images for search

Images should be optimized so search engines and AI systems can understand them, users can access them, and pages load efficiently. They can also earn visibility of their own and add more context to surrounding content.

At the most basic level, compress your existing images with tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel to reduce file size without losing quality.

But image file optimization is only the baseline.

Also consider adding original visuals that give your content something distinctive to surface or cite. Create screenshots, charts, diagrams, or other visuals that add evidence, demonstrate a process, or explain something text alone can’t.

Avoid adding visuals to your content just for the sake of breaking up the page. A useful image should help the reader understand, verify, compare, or complete something.

Then make sure each important image is technically optimized:

• Choose the right file format: Use JPEG for most photos, PNG for graphics or transparent images, and WebP when possible for the best compression and quality.
• Give each file a descriptive file name: Instead of uploading “image1234.png,” rename it to something meaningful like “seo-best-practices-checklist.png” so search engines and AI systems have more context.
• Add descriptive alt text (HTML image descriptions): To help search systems, AI platforms (especially agents that navigate your site), and people using screen readers understand what the image depicts.
• Use lazy loading selectively: Lazy loading tells the browser to load images only when a visitor scrolls to them. Lazy load below-the-fold images so they don’t compete with visible content during the initial page load. Don’t lazy load a hero image or another image likely to be your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) element, as delaying it can make LCP worse.
• Add image schema if it’s relevant: If you’re using important visuals like infographics, product images, or logos, then structured data (ImageObject schema) can help them appear in rich results to boost visibility.

6. Showcase E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T is Google’s framework for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, which was introduced in the Quality Rater Guidelines. 

It matters for AI search too. In our content optimization study of more than 300,000 URLs cited by ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, cited pages scored about 31% higher on E-E-A-T signals than pages that only ranked in Google.

Here’s how to demonstrate E-E-A-T:

• Experience: Share firsthand tips, real examples, or stories from your own work or customers
• Expertise: Add short author bios explaining why you and your team are qualified to write about the topics you cover
• Authority: Link to credible sources (like studies, official organizations, or well-known sites) and earn backlinks from trusted websites in your niche
• Trustworthiness: Keep your site secure with HTTPS, make your contact information easy to find, and be transparent about who you are

For example, Semrush writers often share the workflows they use. In this guide to using AI for competitor analysis, the author walks through their own process and shows the tools at each stage.

On the Semrush blog, we showcase E-E-A-T in many ways, including having a published page that details our strict editorial process involving professional marketers and editors.

A useful quality test is to ask “Could a competitor replace your brand name with theirs without the page losing anything important?”

If yes, add more evidence of real experience or expertise.

7. Publish original data and citable evidence

Original evidence gives publishers and AI systems a reason to reference your content instead of another page covering the same topic.

That evidence might include surveys, experiments, benchmarks, internal data, case studies, or analysis of a public dataset.

For example, Semrush regularly turns its own datasets into original research. 

One study analyzed billions of visits across more than 50,000 websites and found that AI traffic grew 66% in 2025, faster than any other channel measured, although it still accounted for less than 0.15% of total visits.

Another study analyzed thousands of brand appearances across AI search platforms and found that 62% of AI citations were “ghost citations,” where a website was cited as a source but the brand itself wasn’t mentioned in the answer.

Findings like these give other publishers, researchers, and AI systems something specific to reference rather than simply repeating an opinion or widely known advice.

You don’t need a huge dataset. Small-scale testing or firsthand observations can still be valuable if the methodology is clear and the finding is useful.

Where possible, show how you reached the conclusion rather than publishing the statistic alone.

Our AI Overviews study is one example. It spells out the 600,000-keyword dataset behind its headline finding, that the share of commercial SERPs with an AI Overview grew 71% in six months.

8. Build an off-site presence where search and AI systems look

Brand authority isn’t built only on your own domain. Search and AI systems can also encounter your brand through reviews, comparison pages, roundups, communities, directories, podcasts, newsletters, and industry publications.

AirOps’ 2025 research found that about 85% of brand mentions in AI search came from third-party pages. 

That makes off-site visibility especially important when people are researching categories and comparing providers. 

Start by finding the third-party pages AI already relies on in your category. In Semrush's Visibility Overview, open the "Source Opportunities" tab. It lists the sources that cite your competitors and don't mention you.

Those pages are your target list. For review and comparison sites, claim or update your profile and ask recent customers for reviews. For roundups and "best of" lists, pitch the author with a specific reason you belong there, like a feature, a price point, or a customer segment the list doesn't cover yet. For communities, answer questions where your product is a fair answer, under your own name.

Backlinks still matter, and the same relationships typically earn both.

But some links hurt more than they help. SEO expert Lily Ray notes that because of AI, some people have gone back to reciprocal link building (a spammy technique where websites agree to link to one another):

Prioritize placements on trusted sources with active audiences instead of high-volume generic links.

The best kinds of backlinks come from reputable websites and webpages that are relevant to you. So, focus on acquiring links from authoritative sites in your niche or a closely related one. 

Two link building tactics worth starting with:

• Unlinked brand mentions: Use a tool like Brand Monitoring to find unlinked references to your brand on the web, then ask the publisher to add a link to a relevant page on your site. But keep in mind that unlinked brand mentions can still be helpful.
• Broken link building: Find broken backlinks to your own site or competitors’ sites, then persuade admins to replace them with working links to your site

Find broken backlinks in Semrush's Backlinks tool under "Indexed Pages" > "Broken Pages," then use this template in your outreach:

Subject: Quick question about your [topic] article

Hi [Name],

I was reading your article on [specific topic] while researching [related subject], and I noticed that the link to [broken resource/page name] in your section about [relevant section] appears to be broken.

I thought I’d let you know so you can keep your resource up to date.

I recently published a [type of content] about [your topic] that covers [unique value proposition: original research, updated information, comprehensive guide, etc.]. If you’re looking for a replacement, it may be a helpful alternative for your readers:

[URL]

Either way, thanks for creating such a useful resource. I hope this helps you keep the page updated!

Best,
[Your name]

Strengthen brand and entity signals

Brand and entity signals help search engines and AI systems understand who you are, what you offer, and what you’re known for.

The more consistently those facts appear across your site and trusted third-party sources, the easier it is for systems to connect mentions of your brand, products, and people to the right entity.

For example, Semrush maintains a news hub with press releases, media kits, and other up-to-date information about the brand.

Keep core information such as your company name, product names, descriptions, key people, areas of expertise, and other important facts consistent across:

• Your website and author profiles
• Business and industry directories
• Review and comparison sites
• Publisher profiles and contributed articles
• Social and professional profiles

But it goes beyond what you say about yourself. 

Search and AI platforms may place more weight on what independent sources say about you, especially when the same patterns emerge across multiple sources. For instance, Google instructs quality raters to trust independent sources when there is disagreement between what a brand says about itself and how others perceive it.

Another external brand signal to monitor is how many people search for your brand directly each month. This is a signal that your brand is in demand and has an active, interested audience.

Check your branded search volume in Keyword Overview:

Treat distribution as part of the content workflow

Don’t publish valuable content and wait for people to find it.

Plan distribution through:

• Digital PR: Pitch original research, expert commentary, or newsworthy insights to journalists and publishers to earn coverage, mentions, and links beyond your own site
• Newsletters: Share new research, guides, and resources with an existing subscriber base to generate early traffic, engagement, and potential secondary sharing
• Industry communities: Contribute useful insights and resources in places where your audience already discusses the topic, helping content reach relevant readers organically
• Expert outreach: Send useful content directly to experts, creators, or practitioners who may reference, share, or build on it
• Partners: Coordinate distribution with customers, suppliers, associations, or other business partners that have overlapping audiences
• Social channels: Repurpose key findings, examples, or takeaways into platform-native posts that extend the reach of the original content. Original posts do the work here. In our LinkedIn study, about 95% of the LinkedIn posts cited by AI were original, not reshares.
• Relevant publications: Contribute or place content in trusted industry outlets to reach new audiences and strengthen third-party recognition around your brand and expertise

For direct outreach, keep the pitch specific:

Hi [Name], I noticed your [article/resource] covers [topic]. We recently published [research/resource] with [specific useful finding or asset]. If you’re updating the piece, it may be useful for your readers: [URL]

The goal is to give the publisher a reason to reference you, not simply ask for a link.

9. Prepare for agentic search and commerce

AI agents increasingly do more than retrieve information. They can compare products, navigate websites, and complete steps on a user’s behalf.

Make the information they need accurate and easy to access and interpret.

For ecommerce and transactional sites, the priority is keeping your brand and product details accurate. There are two layers to ecommerce AI SEO: 

• Brand optimization: AI frequently recommends retailers that stock particular products. When doing so, it may consider retailer reviews, shipping details, warranties, and refund policies to help shoppers choose where to buy.
• Product optimization: AI systems can also recommend and compare specific products. Keep information such as pricing, availability, discounts, specifications, and warranties accurate across your website and product feeds.

If you don't sell products online, the same rule applies to whatever action matters on your site. Keep pricing pages, booking forms, and contact details current and easy for a machine to read.

Accuracy is only part of the job. You also need to make that information easy for machines to interpret and act on.

Use Product and Offer markup where relevant. Go beyond basic product schema to provide more accurate context in a structured format.

Also use semantic HTML and accessible labels so buttons, forms, and important states are clearly represented in the accessibility tree. 

Check that important actions are accessible to both users and automated systems. Buttons, forms, navigation, and interactive elements should have clear labels, usable keyboard states, and a logical structure that assistive technologies can interpret.

You can use Accessibility Scan & Monitor to identify accessibility issues across your site and prioritize fixes that may otherwise make important content or actions harder to navigate.

10. Monitor performance across Google and AI search

Monitoring search and AI visibility shows which parts of your SEO strategy are working, where your brand is gaining visibility, and where to focus your next improvements.

Rankings and organic traffic still matter, but they no longer capture the full value of SEO.

AI answers can satisfy searches without generating a click, while mentions and citations can expose people to your brand before they ever visit your website. And the clicks AI search does generate can be particularly valuable.

In our AI search traffic study, we found that the average visitor from AI search was 4.4x as valuable as the average organic search visitor based on conversion rate. We also projected that, for digital marketing and SEO topics, AI search could drive more website visitors than organic search by early 2028.

That makes visibility worth measuring even when clicks are harder to come by. Traffic metrics only show part of the picture.

To gain a more complete picture of your search and AI visibility, measure visibility signals such as:

• Organic rankings and traffic
• AI mentions and citations
• Share of voice
• Branded search growth
• AI referral traffic
• Engagement and conversions from AI visitors
• Assisted conversions and revenue

Semrush’s Position Tracking can monitor your Google rankings. 

The AI Visibility Toolkit tracks mentions, citations, and share of voice across AI platforms.

Use performance data to diagnose what to improve

Performance data can tell you more than whether a page is doing well or badly. Use it to identify the constraint holding the page back before deciding what to change.

• High impressions but low rankings may point to weak intent coverage, insufficient authority, or stronger competing pages.
• Strong rankings but a low click-through rate may suggest the title or search snippet isn’t compelling enough.
• High traffic but weak engagement or conversions can indicate the page isn’t satisfying the next step in the user’s journey.
• Backlinks but declining rankings may point to outdated or incomplete content rather than an authority problem.
• AI mentions without citations may mean your brand is recognized, but your content isn’t being used as supporting evidence.
• AI citations but little referral traffic may call for stronger conversion paths rather than more informational content.

The important thing is not to default to a rewrite every time performance dips.

Diagnose the biggest constraint first, then choose the fix that addresses it. Our guide to improving your SEO covers the most common fixes.

Track AI referral traffic in GA4

GA4 now includes a dedicated AI Assistant channel in its default channel grouping, making AI referral traffic easier to identify without building a custom report first.

Visits from recognized AI assistants are automatically grouped under the AI Assistant channel and assigned an ai-assistant medium.

Use the Traffic acquisition report to compare AI traffic with other channels, then assess:

• Which landing pages receive AI visits
• Engagement rates and time on site
• Key events and conversions
• Revenue or assisted conversions
• Which AI platforms send the most valuable visitors

For more granular analysis, filter by session source/medium to identify referrals from platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot. 

You can also create a custom AI channel group if you want your own rules or broader coverage.

Keep in mind that GA4 only captures AI visits that pass referral information. Some AI-driven discovery may result in a later branded search, direct visit, or no click at all.

That’s why AI referral traffic should be measured alongside mentions, citations, share of voice, and branded demand rather than treated as the complete picture.

FAQ

What are SEO best practices?

SEO best practices are repeatable methods that help search engines and AI systems access, understand, trust, and surface your content. They cover areas such as search intent, content quality, technical accessibility, authority, and measurement.

Which SEO best practice matters most?

Satisfying the user’s intent is the foundation. Technical SEO, authority, and optimization can help a page compete, but they can’t compensate for content that doesn’t answer what the user actually needs.

Do SEO best practices help with AI search?

Yes. Crawlability, clear structure, topical depth, original evidence, entity clarity, and third-party recognition can all support visibility across Google and AI search. 

How is SEO changing in 2026 with AI-generated answers?

SEO now influences more discovery surfaces, while more searches can end without an organic click. That makes mentions, citations, share of voice, and branded demand increasingly useful alongside rankings and traffic.

What are SEO best practices for ecommerce websites?

Alongside general SEO fundamentals, ecommerce sites should maintain clear category structures, strong internal links, accurate product information, Product and Offer markup, current pricing and availability, reviews, and clear shipping and return policies.

Turn SEO best practices into measurable visibility

Getting the fundamentals right helps your content compete. The next step is seeing where that work actually earns visibility across search and AI platforms.

Use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to track your brand’s mentions, citations, and share of voice in AI search, then combine those insights with Position Tracking to monitor your performance in Google.

That gives you a clearer view of where you’re already being surfaced, where competitors are gaining ground, and what to improve next.

For a step-by-step version of everything above, work through our SEO checklist, or start with these SEO tips for quick wins.