Is LLM optimization the same as SEO? — According to SEO Week experts
- George Nguyen
- Apr 8
- 9 min read
Author: George Nguyen
Right now, the work you’re putting into your SEO is probably also fueling your brand’s presence on LLMs, too. But, does that warrant approaching them the same way? Is this really a BOGO on organic visibility?
For this article, I contacted eight expert speakers that will appear at this year’s SEO Week in NYC (April 28 to May 1) to find out:
Their responses covered shared tactics, convergence, agency offerings, industry narratives, client communications, and taking advantage of the opportunities that this channel can bring.
Before we dig in, make sure to sign up for our upcoming webinar on How to Win in the Age of Conversational Search, with iPullRank’s Mike King on April 15 at 1PM ET.
How experts view SEO and LLM optimization similarity
We already know that SEO and LLM optimization share some common tactics, so let’s contextualize that overlap to understand how close the two truly are, how these technologies might converge in the future, and how agencies and consultants are marketing their expertise.
Critical tactics overlap, but is that uncommon?
Most of the expert respondents pointed to overlapping fundamental practices when discussing the similarities between SEO and LLM optimization:
“When it comes to optimization efforts, optimizing for both search engines and LLMs generally involves the same core activities: creating crawlable and indexable, semantically relevant content that aligns with and satisfies user search preferences and behavior.” — Aleyda Solis, SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti
This is because, “Where the goal is to improve the visibility of a brand or website, there will be tactics that are generally the same, whether you are looking at optimizing for LLMs or traditional search engines,” Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications at Wix and SEO Week speaker on generative search optimization, said.
However, she also cautioned marketers not to overestimate this overlap, adding, “There are common tactics across all digital marketing—for instance, YouTube or TikTok has a lot of overlap with SEO, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t unique.”
Unlike TikTok, YouTube, or social media, though, there’s a potential for convergence between SEO and LLMs.
Is convergence on the horizon?
“Now that most search engines have integrated LLMs, the convergence of disciplines makes identifying the differences between the two immaterial to an extent.” — Garrett Sussman, Marketing Director at iPullRank
“When ChatGPT first went mainstream, it did not leverage search,” Garrett Sussman, who will lead a session on AI and search behavior at SEO Week, said, “Until AI Overviews, Google didn’t leverage LLMs.”
Platforms, like SearchGPT, that combine the training data and algorithms of LLMs with real-time information from the internet and search algorithms are entering the market. If widely adopted, the divisions between these channels won’t exist.
Similar enough for SEO agencies to specialize in
Depending on how users ultimately adapt their search behavior to take advantage of LLMs (i.e., depending on whether search engines remain the dominant platform and how roll out AI), LLM optimization can continue to be viewed as a subdiscipline of SEO. I said “continue” because it’s already happening.
“LLMs are an emerging item that’s currently being assimilated under the umbrella of SEO,” Dan Petrovic of DEJAN, said, “There will be agencies that specialize in LLMs just like there are some that specialize in local SEO.”
Since ChatGPT’s initial public debut, the SEO tool industry has rallied behind AI-driven features, so it’s no surprise that agencies and consultants might also try to promote their services this way.
How experts view SEO and LLM optimization as unique practices
In a nutshell, here is how SEO and LLM optimization differs from both the user perspective and the SEO’s perspective:
“Here, the medium determines the method. LLMs and traditional search engines have completely different user experiences, engagement, expectations and opportunities to engage with the audience. As a Google user, if I enter a query, I don't have the option to choose which model I want, I can't even decide if I do or don't want to see a featured snippet or AIO. Users choose LLMs for queries when they expect to have an extended discussion on a given topic. The steps you take to be present in those conversations and the methods you use to measure impact have unique focus that sits beyond SEO alone. I have delivered improvements to visibility on LLMs by taking steps that had little to nothing to do with driving traffic to a website and had no direct impact on rankings. This is a distinct activity.” — Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications at Wix Studio
Let’s zoom in further on the SEO’s perspective.
These SEO tactics that don’t carry over to LLMs
“Conversational search (ChatGPT, AIOs, Deep Research) exposes core SEO software flaws,” Mike King, founder of iPullRank and organizer of SEO Week, said on LinkedIn, “These models retrieve and compute responses based on semantic relationships, while most SEO software still relies on the lexical model and just tells you how to do complex keyword stuffing.”
While keyword stuffing can be seen as a hack of days long gone, the point stands: sometimes hacky stuff works to improve your SEO. Search engines then catch on to these tactics and attempt to nullify them. This has been Google’s cat-and-mouse game with SEOs for over a decade (whether a similar dynamic between SEOs and LLM platforms will emerge remains to be seen).
For a long time, JavaScript was a bigger concern for technical SEOs. In 2019, Google’s rendering capabilities greatly expanded (with the release of the ‘evergreen’ Googlebot), alleviating some of those worries. “LLMs don't typically render JavaScript, so SEO has a leg up in that it can have additional content that LLMs may not be able to find,” said Andrew Prince, senior SEO manager at Rocket Mortgage.
“LLMs don’t build a link graph,” Zack Notes, founder at Sandbox SEO, pointed out, suggesting that SEOs and agencies that focus on link building may not have this advantage when it comes to conversational search.
“They are 10 years behind at crawling, they don’t use Schema markup the same way, etc.” says Notes, who will lead an SEO Week session on AI-powered experiences that win on the SERPs, adding, “I think one of the most interesting differences is that LLMs will tell you why they rank brands the way they do. If you don't think you're being ranked fairly, you can just ask for the reasoning. Sometimes they will even cite a specific review or article that tipped their opinion. This breaks open the black box of traditional search.”
In addition to the technical differences laid out above, LLMs are far less of a monolith than search engines are. I mean that in two ways:
Google has been the clear market leader for decades and no AI platform has achieved that level of dominance so far. As far as a general user is concerned, Google = search, but ChatGPT (for example) hasn’t yet risen to the level of being synonymous with generative AI.
LLM training varies by platform, which means the data used in responses also varies by LLM (so, optimizing for ChatGPT might be nuanced from optimizing for Perplexity, for example). While search engine algorithms vary between search providers, most practitioners generally do not factor the differences into their strategy because of Google’s extreme share of users.
“In order to truly optimize for an LLM, you need to know what information retrieval methods and resources it utilizes as well as if it is using search to supplement,” Jori Ford, chief marketing & product officer at FoodBoss, explained. “Then, determine how to become part of relevant or relative resources that it uses to compile the response,” Ford, who will lead an SEO Week session on a crawler-driven approach to maximizing search and AI visibility, said, adding, “In short, there’s a number of unlisted methods to get in and none of them are ‘sure fire.’”
A new channel, a new line of work
“Even if we use the same rank trackers with LLM monitoring capabilities, this will still be yet another channel to track, with its own metrics, KPIs, and goals. Because of this, we increasingly need to treat it as an additional line of work. While it can fall under the broader umbrella of ‘optimization’ for impactful discovery channels (such as TikTok or YouTube), it will still require its own dedicated effort, prioritization, and strategy.” — Aleyda Solis, SEO Consultant and Founder at Orainti
The discussion here was never ‘is LLM optimization different from SEO?’—it’s about how it’s different and whether that ultimately means we need to change how we (as digital marketers and SEOs) go about our jobs.
Because technologies and capabilities are different across the two, goals and KPIs are different (as Solis mentioned above), which means that, while your SEO efforts may benefit your brand presence in LLMs, you still need to treat LLM optimization as its own discipline if you want the best results.
At the end of the day, that means advocating for your clients and stakeholders to treat these channels differently, which can have major implications for your strategic direction as well as day-to-day responsibilities.
What experts are telling their stakeholders
Experienced SEOs will recall the hype around voice search, BERT, and similar industry milestones. Most of the time, those advancements told us to keep doing what we were already doing (i.e., keep creating ‘high-quality, relevant’ content and stay away from sketchy tactics). So, communications with stakeholders fell into a certain pattern of alleviating worries and re-emphasizing best practices.
There’s certainly still an element of that with LLM optimization, and with any good ‘crisis’, there’s also a silver lining to point out to your stakeholders as well.
Keep calm and market on
“Oftentimes, SEO is seen as a black box and LLMs add another variable into the mix,” Prince said, advising that, “Limiting confusion and worry by explaining how they are more similar than different is a helpful approach with stakeholders.”
Although most SEOs already seem to advocate for an omnichannel marketing strategy, that’s never more palpable than when search traffic is uncertain. “It's important to recognize that appearing in LLMs and search engines is part of a broader marketing ecosystem,” Sussman reminds his stakeholders, “As these platforms may drive less direct traffic, they still play a crucial role in supporting overall marketing efforts, like paid campaigns, social media, and brand awareness.”
“Ultimately, brand awareness is key to driving revenue and achieving business goals, with SEO and LLMs serving as supportive channels.” — Garrett Sussman, Marketing Director at iPullRank
Highlight opportunities and secure resources
As with any new development in marketing, those that successfully identify the potential, sell it to their stakeholders, and execute properly are the most likely to win. But in this case, how do you get more resources when the SEO that you do already supports your LLM visibility?
“There are additional steps that you can take to specifically manage your presence on LLMs, however this is a little bit like conversion rate optimization,” Carter said, “Meaning that those working in enterprise teams or on sites with large traffic volume are likely to see impact much more quickly than those that have a small amount of traffic.”
The specific opportunity for your brand will also depend on the prompts audiences use, the competitors and sources that appear in responses, your site’s crawlability, etc. If you can underscore those opportunities for your stakeholders, then you should also come up with a strategy and list of resources necessary to turn that potential into an advantage for your business.
“We are generally focusing on technical SEO because at scale, I believe it will have the most impact on what LLMs can easily consume and consider in their processes,” Cindy Krum, CEO and founder of MobileMoxie, said of what she’s currently focusing on with clients. “Things like bad JavaScript implementations and slow load time will impact what an LLM is able to get out of your site,” she added.
If you can easily justify resource investment because of learnings that you can apply at scale (i.e., across clients or industries), then LLM optimization might have been just what you were waiting for. “I'm leveraging interest in LLMs to buy resource allocation for unique research, optimizing the crawl path, and brand building,” Notes said.
SEOs have the skills, so embrace the opportunity
“SEOs are best placed to support brands with LLM optimization as this technology develops,” Crystal Carter said, “We are familiar with monitoring tools, testing and evidencing the improvements we've made for our clients across the web—where SEOs are bringing strategic insights and data-backed recommendations to their processes, they will be able to lead in this space.”
LLMs are here to stay, and whether you personally view LLM optimization as a subset of SEO (or its own discipline) is secondary to the fact that SEOs are the best positioned to apply their skills here. That competitive advantage is something all SEOs should use to maximum effect for their brands, clients, and careers.
Don’t just take my word for it, though…
George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix. He creates content to help users and marketers better understand how search works. He was formerly a search news journalist and is known to speak at the occasional industry event.
