Whitepaper
SEO & AI Search Checklist & Handbook → How to get recommended by Google Search and AI Platforms
👋 A note from the author Hey, I'm José, Founder of Reach AI (usereach.ai). This playbook is the result of years of learnings and extensive research. I learned SEO from top experts during the Techstars NYC program with my last company, and I've spent the last months deep in experiments, figuring out what actually works for SEO & AI Search. Reach is the first AI agent that actually does the SEO and AI search work for you instead of just giving visibility. From technical website metadata optimization and creating high-quality content while staying in brand, to securing backlinks and getting you featured on Reddit and Wikipedia. Think of it like a 24/7 SEO team, powered by AI, that helps you rank higher on Google and AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. My goal is to give you a straightforward blueprint to turn search into your most powerful growth channel. Need help putting this into action? Let's connect. LinkedIn | Twitter/X
Why This Playbook Exists
Search has fundamentally changed.
It's no longer enough to show up in Google’s blue links. Your customers are now asking AI platforms direct questions and getting instant recommendations without ever visiting a website, and you need to be in the answer.
But there's good news. The traffic that you get is more valuable than ever. A user arriving from an AI recommendation is highly qualified and has already been warmed up. The goal is no longer just to get clicks; it's to build trust and influence at every touchpoint.
This playbook is designed to help you:
Rank higher on Google search results
Be cited in AI-generated answers
Turn search into a growth channel that compounds over time
This isn’t theory. It’s a field guide built from the trenches, shaped by world-class experts, real-world case studies, and our own hands-on experiments at Reach. It’s the same operating system we built into our AI agent so companies can run this process on autopilot while they focus on building their product.
Inside, you’ll get proven strategies that have helped brands win six-figure deals from AI search and cautionary lessons from those who tried to game the system and paid the price with lost rankings and vanished traffic.
This playbook provides a unified strategy to win on both fronts. It’s built on the principle that modern SEO is about converging with value, not just gaming an algorithm. We'll cover the timeless fundamentals of traditional SEO and the cutting-edge tactics required for the new world of AI Search Optimization (AISO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Inside, you’ll find:
A 30-Day SEO & AISO Execution Checklist
A handbook for long-term strategy.
Hard-earned lessons from companies who got it wrong (including those wiped out overnight after bad AI content plays).
The brands that dominate in 2025 will build for both Google & AI Search in parallel.
The 30-Day SEO & AISO Execution Checklist ✅
This isn't just a to-do list; it's a 30-day sprint. Follow this week-by-week execution plan to build your entire SEO & AISO foundation from scratch and start driving tangible results.
Week 1: Strategy, Research & Technical Foundations
Goal: Establish a rock-solid strategy, understand the AI search landscape, and fix the critical technical issues that are holding you back.
1. Strategy & Goal Setting
Define the primary business outcome (e.g., "increase qualified demo requests," "boost online sales").
Translate that outcome into a SMART SEO goal (e.g., "Increase organic demo request conversions by 20% in Q4").
Identify and document your 3-5 core KPIs (e.g., Organic Conversions, Keyword Rankings, LLM Citation Count).
2. Audience, Keyword & Prompt Research
Create a detailed Buyer Persona document, including their goals, pain points, motivations, and the language they use.
Brainstorm 10-15 "seed" topics representing your core expertise.
Use an SEO tool to find 50+ related keywords, analyzing Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty and SERP Features. Prioritize a mix of low-difficulty "quick wins" and high-difficulty long-term targets. For each keyword, search it on Google. Is the intent Informational, Commercial, or Transactional? Your content must match the intent of the ranking results.
(Prompt Analysis): Analyze Reddit and Quora to identify 15-20 conversational, long-tail questions your audience is asking (e.g., "what are the differences between X and Y," "best software for [role]").
3. Technical SEO Audit
Set up and verify your site on Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Run a full site crawl using a tool like Screaming Frog.
Generate a clean XML Sitemap (no 404s or redirects) and submit it to both GSC and Bing.
Review your robots.txt file to ensure you are not blocking any important content, CSS, or JS files.
Establish a working LLMs.txt file to control access for specific AI crawlers if needed.
4. Critical Technical Fixes
Find and create a priority list of all internal broken links (404 errors) from your crawl report.
Implement 301 redirects for the top 10 most important broken inbound links.
Run your key pages through PageSpeed Insights and create a ticket for your development team to address the biggest Core Web Vitals issues.
Confirm your entire site uses HTTPS by default.
5. Generative Search Behavior Analysis
Take 5 of your top target prompts and manually test them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
Document the types of answers provided (e.g., summary, bullet points, direct answer).
Document the patterns in the sources being cited (e.g., Are they blogs? News sites? Forums?).
Week 2: Content Audit, Optimization & Creation
Goal: Overhaul existing content through a GEO lens and publish your first fully optimized article.
1. Existing Content Audit (GEO Lens)
Audit your top 10 existing blog posts for alignment with the conversational prompts identified in Week 1.
Analyze the branding and positioning language in your H1s, H2s, menu, and footer. Is it clear and logical, or full of marketing fluff?
For each of those 10 posts, assess whether they contain credible, cited sources. Add at least one authoritative outbound link to each.
2. On-Page Retrofitting
Choose one high-traffic blog post and rewrite the introduction to be an "Answer-First" summary.
On that same post, ensure it has a clear author bio box and a visible publication/last updated date.
Add a simple "Table of Contents" to a long-form guide for better navigation.
Find a list within the content and reformat it using bullet points or a numbered list.
Convert a data point presented in a paragraph into a simple HTML table.
3. Plan & Create Your First AISO-Optimized Article
Select one "quick win" prompt from your research.
Create a detailed content brief including target audience, a proposed H2/H3 structure, and key questions to answer.
Write (or use an AI co-pilot) the first draft.
Human Edit: A human expert must review the entire article for flow, accuracy, and unique insights. This is non-negotiable.
4. Publish with On-Page Excellence
Write a unique, keyword-rich Title Tag (under 60 characters).
Write a compelling Meta Description (under 160 characters) that encourages clicks.
Ensure the page has one, and only one, descriptive H1 tag.
Add descriptive alt text to all images.
Add at least two relevant internal links to other important pages.
Publish the new article and share it on your primary social channel.
Week 3: Authority, Trust & Off-Page Signals
Goal: Actively build signals across the web that establish your brand as a trustworthy authority.
1. E-E-A-T & Trust Signal Enhancement
Create or enhance detailed author bio pages for your main content creators, establishing their expertise and experience.
Update your "About Us" page to be more comprehensive and trustworthy.
Add a section with customer logos or testimonials to your homepage and key service pages.
2. Strategic Community Engagement
Identify 3-5 relevant subreddits where your audience spends time.
Make at least three genuinely helpful comments or posts on Reddit without promoting your company directly to build positive sentiment.
Find one question on Quora related to your expertise and write a detailed, valuable answer.
3. High-Impact Authority Building
Identify 3 high-authority industry publications where you could publish a guest post. Draft and send one pitch.
Identify 3 "best of" listicles where your brand should be included. Formulate a plan to contact the editors.
Set up Google Alerts for your brand name to find unlinked mentions and reach out to one author to request a link.
(Advanced): Investigate the feasibility of creating a Wikipedia page for your brand or founder (only if truly notable).
Week 4: Advanced AISO, Measurement & Iteration
Goal: Implement advanced AISO techniques and establish the feedback loop for continuous improvement.
1. Advanced AISO & Structured Data
Test a key page with JavaScript disabled to confirm all important content is visible in the raw HTML.
Implement Organization schema on your homepage, including social profiles in the sameAs property.
Implement Article and Person (for the author) schema on the blog post you published in Week 2.
Find a page with a Q&A section and implement FAQPage schema.
Use Google's Rich Results Test to validate ALL schema and fix any reported errors.
Review and plan to update your schema markup quarterly as content evolves.
2. Measurement & Monitoring Setup
Add a "How did you hear about us?" open-text field to your primary conversion form.
Set up conversion tracking in GA4 to track leads and revenue from organic search.
Set up a project in an AI visibility tool (like Otterly.ai or similar) to track your performance for your top 5 target prompts.
Create a simple dashboard to monitor your core KPIs: Organic Traffic, Conversions, Rankings, and AI Citations.
3. The Feedback Loop: Analyze & Refine
(Generative AI Testing): Manually test your target prompts again. Document any changes in the AI responses. Did your new content get cited?
In GSC, identify one page with high impressions but low CTR. Schedule a task to rewrite its title and meta description.
In GA4, identify one page with high traffic but low engagement (or conversions). Schedule a task to audit and improve its content and CTAs.
Hold a Monthly GEO Performance Review: Look at your dashboard, discuss what worked and what didn't, and set priorities for the next 30-day cycle.
The comprehensive Handbook 📖
Beyond the checklist: A deep dive into the 'why'. This handbook breaks down the core strategies, mental models, and first principles for winning in the new age of search.
Part 1: The Core Disciplines of Modern Search
This is your foundation. A successful search strategy is a flywheel where each of these disciplines reinforces the others. Mastering them is non-negotiable for long-term, defensible growth.
Chapter 1: Traditional SEO (The Bedrock)
Before you can win the future of search, you must master the present. This is the price of admission.
What It Is: The practice of optimizing your website's technical health and on-page elements to be perfectly legible and trustworthy to search engines like Google.
Why It Matters: If Google can't efficiently crawl, understand, and index your site, even the best content in the world will remain invisible. A poor technical foundation is like building a skyscraper on sand.
How to Execute:
Technical Health Audit: Use a crawler like Screaming Frog and Google Search Console to find and fix critical errors. Prioritize:
Crawlability: A clean robots.txt file and an error-free sitemap.xml.
Indexability: No broken internal links (404s), redirect chains, or keyword cannibalization issues.
Page Experience: A fast site that passes Core Web Vitals (CWV) and is flawless on mobile.
On-Page Excellence: Optimize every important page to clearly signal its purpose.
Metadata: Write unique, compelling Title Tags and Meta Descriptions that attract clicks.
Content Structure: Use a logical heading structure (one H1, then H2s and H3s) to organize content for both users and crawlers.
Chapter 2: Brand Authority SEO (Building Trust)
Google and AI don't just rank websites; they rank trusted brands. Your primary job is to build and signal that you are a credible, authoritative entity.
What It Is: The process of establishing and showcasing your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
Why It Matters: Trust is the most valuable currency in search. AI models, in particular, are designed to cite sources they deem authoritative. A strong brand reputation is your moat.
How to Execute:
Showcase Authorship: Don't publish anonymous content. Create detailed author bios with credentials, experience, and links to their social profiles.
Be Transparent: Maintain robust "About Us," "Contact Us," and policy pages. This signals you are a real, accountable business.
Cite Sources: Back up all factual claims by linking to authoritative studies and data. This is a massive trust signal for AI.
Gather Social Proof: Prominently display customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, and media mentions.
Chapter 3: Topic Domination & Content Layering
Don't just write articles; build a library. The goal is to own a topic so completely that search engines see you as the definitive, go-to resource.
What They Are:
Topic Domination: A strategy to build deep topical authority by creating a comprehensive network of content around a core subject.
Content Layering: The practice of structuring this content in a hierarchical way, moving from broad overviews to niche, specific articles.
Why They Matter: This structure proves deep expertise. It's how you move from being a site with a few good articles to the authority in your niche.
How to Execute (The Topic Cluster Model):
Pillar Page: Create a long-form, "ultimate guide" on a broad topic (e.g., "The Complete Guide to Remote Project Management").
Cluster Content: Write multiple, shorter articles on specific sub-topics (e.g., "Best Software for Remote Teams," "How to Manage Asynchronous Communication," "Tax Implications for Remote Workers").
Strategic Internal Linking: Every cluster article must link back up to the main pillar page. This funnels authority and explicitly shows search engines how your content is related, creating a powerful knowledge graph on your own site.
Chapter 4: Community & Platform SEO
Your audience doesn't just live on Google. They live on Reddit, YouTube, Quora, and LinkedIn. Your brand needs to live there too.
What They Are:
Community SEO: Authentically engaging in online communities where your audience gathers to build brand visibility and trust.
Platform SEO: Optimizing your content to be discovered on platforms other than your website, like YouTube or a podcast directory.
Why They Matter: These platforms are massive sources of training data for AI models. Reddit is one of the most-cited domains in ChatGPT. An answer given on a forum or a statement made in a YouTube video can directly shape an AI's response about your brand or industry.
How to Execute:
Reddit & Quora: Find relevant subreddits and questions. Don't spam your links. Answer questions, provide genuine value, and become a trusted member of the community.
YouTube: Create helpful video content. The transcript of your video is fully indexable and provides rich, conversational data for AI to cite.
Chapter 5: Parasite SEO
Leverage the immense authority of massive platforms to rank for competitive terms faster than you could on your own.
What It Is: Publishing definitive, high-quality content on high-authority third-party domains (like Medium, LinkedIn, or as a guest post on a major industry publication) to rank for keywords that are currently out of reach for your own website.
Why It Matters: It's a strategic way to get visibility in competitive SERPs while you build your own domain's authority. These mentions also contribute to the "surround sound" that AI models look for.
How to Execute:
Identify a high-value, high-competition target keyword.
Find a high-authority platform that accepts user-generated content or guest posts.
Create the best possible piece of content on that topic, optimize it for the keyword, and include contextual links back to your own site.
Chapter 6-10: The Extended Arsenal
Chapter 6: LLM Answer SEO (AEO): This is the core of AI optimization, focusing on structuring content to be directly quoted. We cover this in-depth in Part 2.
Chapter 7: Paid Search Visibility: Use paid ads as a research tool. High Cost-Per-Click (CPC) on a keyword often signals high commercial intent, helping you prioritize your organic content efforts.
Chapter 8: Building a Trust Funnel: Shift from a linear marketing funnel to a "Trust Funnel." Every piece of content, every interaction, is an opportunity to build trust and authority. The goal isn't just to convert, but to become the most trusted voice in your space.
Chapter 9: The Distribution Engine: Creating content is only half the work. You need a system to distribute it. This includes repurposing thought leadership from videos and podcasts into guides, templates, and social media posts.
Chapter 10: Building the Flywheel: All these disciplines must work together. Your Community SEO efforts should inform your content strategy. Your content should be repurposed for Platform SEO. Your Parasite SEO should link back to your core Pillar Pages. Each part reinforces the others, creating a powerful, self-sustaining growth engine.
Part 2: A Founder's Guide to Avoiding Google Penalties
Lessons from a 22,000-Page Disaster
The temptation to use AI to mass-produce content is immense, but it's a dangerous shortcut. One company learned this the hard way: they published over 22,000 AI-generated pages and their organic traffic dropped to zero. Overnight.
This wasn't a manual penalty. It was an algorithmic kill switch. Let's break down what went wrong so you can avoid the same fate.
The Anatomy of the Penalty
The Flawed Strategy: The idea was to use programmatic SEO to rank for thousands of long-tail keywords. They scraped content (like return policies and financial terms), used AI to rewrite it, and published it automatically without human review.
What Went Wrong (The Red Flags):
Aggressive Scale on a Weak Domain: They published thousands of pages on a brand new domain with virtually no authority. This is a massive spam signal.
Thin, Low-Value Content: The articles were short (~200 words) and offered no unique insight. They were just repackaged, easily available information.
Irrelevant Targeting: The keywords they ranked for (e.g., "Zara return policy") were completely unrelated to their actual product (invoice software). This confused Google about their expertise.
Lack of Human Oversight: There was no manual review. The entire process was automated, resulting in generic, low-quality "AI slop."
The Core Lesson: AI is a Tool, Not a Strategy
The problem wasn't the AI. The problem was how it was used. AI is an incredibly powerful co-pilot, but it's a terrible autopilot. Using it to create garbage at scale will get you penalized.
The Rules for Safe, Intelligent Scaling
Rule #1: Quality Over Quantity, Always. A slow, deliberate strategy of publishing 1-3 excellent, human-edited articles per week will always outperform a spammy, high-volume approach. Of course, you can (and should) also do a bit of quantity (e.g. publishing 1 lower effort - AI generated, but with the right context and instructions - blog per day to target low competition keywords) as long as they’re relevant and being balanced out with higher quality blogs.
Rule #2: Human Oversight is Non-Negotiable. Every single piece of content must be reviewed, edited, and given a unique perspective by a human expert. Use AI for research and first drafts, not the final product.
Rule #3: Target with Precision. Only go after keywords and topics that are directly relevant to your product and your audience's problems. Build topical authority, don't chase irrelevant traffic.
Rule #4: Build Authority Before You Scale. Establish trust with a foundation of high-quality content before you even consider programmatic approaches.
Part 3: The AI Frontier — AISO & GEO Explained
This is where the game is won in 2025. It's not enough to be visible; you need to be the source of truth for AI.
Chapter 11: What is GEO & Why It Matters
What It Is: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), also called Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), is the practice of optimizing your entire digital presence to be favorably cited and recommended by AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews.
Why It Matters: As users shift from keyword searches to conversational prompts, the battlefield for discovery is moving from the SERP to the AI-generated answer. If you are not cited, you are invisible. While fewer clicks might come to your site, the ones that do are from users who are already educated and have high intent, making them incredibly valuable.
Chapter 12: Context Engineering for Prompts
The foundation of any successful AI-driven content strategy is feeding the AI the right information from the start. We call this Context Engineering.
What It Is: The process of creating core "artifact" documents that provide a deep, foundational understanding of your business. These artifacts act as a single source of truth for any AI model you work with.
Why It Matters: If you give an AI a one-sentence prompt, you'll get a generic output. If you give it a rich, detailed context, it can produce nuanced, on-brand content. This is the biggest lever for improving the quality of AI-assisted work.
How to Execute (Create These Three Artifacts):
The Company Context: A deep dive into your business. Include your origin story, market position, product features (and what they enable), direct and mindshare competitors, and recent company news.
The Audience Persona: Go beyond demographics. Map out your ideal customer's daily reality, their jobs-to-be-done, their biggest fears and frustrations, and what builds trust with them. Use quotes from real sales calls or customer reviews.
The Writing Guidelines: Don't just use adjectives like "friendly and professional." Show, don't tell.
Define your tone with a spectrum (e.g., "Respectful Confidence, not Arrogant Expertise").
Provide "good" and "bad" examples of writing.
Use archetypes (e.g., "Write like Paul Graham explaining a complex topic simply").
Chapter 13: The Step-by-Step Execution Framework
This is the assembly line for producing high-quality, AISO-optimized content at scale.
Map Opportunities: Combine competitive analysis, audience research, and what your solution enables to create a backlog of content ideas. Score each idea based on persona fit, search intent, and conversion potential.
Create the Assignment Brief: For each chosen topic, use AI (fed with your artifacts) to generate a detailed brief. This should include a target audience, primary and secondary keywords, a proposed structure, and key questions to answer.
Deep Research (Broken into Questions): Instead of researching a broad topic, break it down into specific questions (e.g., "What are the overhead costs for a mid-sized construction company?"). This forces a more structured and factual research process.
Drafting (with an Expert in the Loop): Use AI to generate the first draft, based on the brief and research. This is where the human expert comes in. Their job is not to write from scratch but to raise the bar—editing for flow, adding unique insights, and ensuring the voice is perfect.
Post-Processing & Fact-Checking:
Fact-Check: Break the article into claims and use AI research tools to verify each one against reputable sources.
Internal Linking: Add relevant internal links to your pillar pages and other related content.
Publish & Distribute: Get the content live and push it out through your distribution channels (social, newsletter, etc.).
Chapter 14: Writing Guidelines for AI Visibility (GEO)
To get cited by AI, you must write in a way that is easy for a machine to parse, trust, and quote.
✅ Lead with the Answer: State the direct answer to a question in the first sentence. The rest of the paragraph can provide context.
✅ Use Clear, Factual Language: Ditch the marketing fluff.
Bad: "Our software offers a revolutionary, synergistic paradigm shift."
Good: "Our software helps you track inventory in real-time."
✅ Structure for Extraction: AI loves clean formats. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and simple HTML tables whenever possible.
✅ Use Tables Over Images: AI cannot read text inside an image. If you have a chart, recreate it as a simple HTML table.
✅ Cite Everything: Link out to your sources. This is a massive trust signal for AI models.
⚠️ Disclaimers
🔒 Private & For Your Eyes Only
→ We've poured a lot of effort into creating this playbook and are sharing it to help you build your business. We encourage you to use it, learn from it, and adapt it to your needs. In return, we ask that you respect the work.
→ Please do not reproduce, republish, or distribute this guide in whole or in part without our explicit permission.
→ This content is the intellectual property of Reach AI. Be cool, don't pass it off as your own.
📈 No Performance Guarantees
The strategies in this guide are the product of real-world testing, expensive mistakes, and hard-won successes. We are confident that these methods, when implemented thoughtfully, can create a powerful growth engine.
However, your success depends on many factors outside this document: your market, your product, your team's execution, and a bit of luck. Nothing in this playbook should be taken as a promise or guarantee of specific results. Think of this as a map, you still have to drive the car.
This playbook is built on years of testing and learning across dozens of B2B SaaS companies. That doesn’t mean it’s a promise of results. Your outcomes will depend on factors we can’t control — like your execution, product-market fit, team, and market conditions.
Any examples or case studies here are just that: examples. They’re not predictions. Use your own judgment, and ideally, get help from someone who knows SEO inside out.
📝 What You’re Agreeing To
By reading this, you agree to: → Keep the playbook private. → Not share it with anyone else unless we say it’s okay. → Not reuse or replicate our methods without the right context and expertise.
All rights to the content, structure, and frameworks remain with us. Unauthorized use or sharing is prohibited.