TL;DR
LLMs pull from repeated mentions and contextual associations across the web to decide who to cite.
Volume can matter more for AI visibility than SEO purists want to admit—blog posts, press releases, and even lower-tier links all contribute.
Niche-relevant blog posts can get cited as primary sources in LLM answers, even AI-assisted ones.
Comparisons position you as an unbiased authority LLMs love to cite.
I got my brand mentioned by ChatGPT, and it wasn’t talking about us before. 👋 There was a specific thing I did that led to that result, and I’m gonna tell you exactly what it is.
If you’ve been reading the same recycled advice about how to get brand mentions in LLMs like “build authority, work with influencers, yada yada” and you’re still not showing up in AI answers, this post is for you. 👊
The game changed. Link building didn’t die, but it evolved, and now we’re playing for something different: getting cited as a source inside AI-generated answers.
That’s a whole different animal, and most of the advice out there doesn’t give you anything concrete to actually do about it. So I’m skipping the theory.
Four tactics that worked for me, including one I’m certain is the reason we broke through. Let’s get into it.
Discover how to increase your brand visibility in AI searches.
Why Brand Mentions Matter More Than Backlinks Now
Here’s the shift that a lot of SEOs are still catching up to: LLMs are not searching like Google. They’re searching differently. They’re searching everywhere.
Google cares about your Domain Authority, your backlink profile, your page speed. An LLM? It’s pulling from a massive pool of data—articles, forums, press releases, reviews, random blog posts—and it’s looking for patterns. It wants repeated context around your brand.
It wants to see your brand name show up repeatedly, in the right context, across multiple sources. That’s how it builds confidence that you’re a credible answer to someone’s question. Repetition builds confidence.
Semrush describes this as “LLM Seeding”, which is basically the practice of distributing content so that AI models can easily find, understand, and reference your brand. Distribution is the lever.
And here’s the distinction that matters: brand mentions are the input, citations are the output. You control the mentions. The LLM decides the citations.
Your job is to give it so many good reasons to pick you that it basically has no choice. Search Engine Land breaks this down really well and explains how LLMs look beyond backlinks to context and co-occurrence. Context beats raw links.
So. How do you actually do that? Here are the tactics.
Tip 1: Build Backlinks — Yes, Even the “Lower Tier” Ones
I know. It’s boring. You already knew to do this. But do it anyway. Do it anyway.
Now here’s where I’m gonna say something that’ll make some SEO folks uncomfortable: flood the internet with your brand and links.
Yeah, a New York Times link beats a directory citation all day long. I understand that. But I think there’s real value in sheer volume when it comes to AI visibility specifically. Volume creates visibility.
More things to index, more mentions, more connections, more of a neural network around your brand and what it represents and what it is.
How LLMs retrieve information
When an AI answers a question, it can use a process called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). The model searches across large datasets—webpages, forums, videos, reviews—finds relevant passages, then synthesizes an answer.
More mentions across more sources can mean more chances of being retrieved. Not all LLMs use RAG, though: some rely solely on training data, while others (like Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot) retrieve web content in real time.
Traditional SEO says quality over quantity. And for Google rankings, sure. But LLMs aren’t Google. They’re casting a much wider net. It’s a different game.
So those tier-one links? Get them if you can. But the lower-tier ones? I think they’re still good for this specific purpose. Don’t sleep on them.
Tip 2: Keep Writing Blog Posts (Seriously, Don’t Stop)
I know it’s not 2021 anymore and blog posts just don’t mean what they did. But I still find articles that I wrote, and wrote with AI, being cited as the primary source for an LLM’s answer.
Which is kind of insane if you think about it. It’s almost like AI feeding AI. But it works. It actually works.
So if that works, why would you not just keep doing it? Keep doing it.
The key is to make sure your posts are relevant to your topic silo. That’s how the AI determines whether your content matches a query. Topical relevance wins.
If you sell iPhone cases and you’re writing about cryptocurrency, that’s not helping you. Stay in your lane. Build depth, not breadth. Build depth.
Caution
Don’t just publish random content to hit a volume target. LLMs evaluate topical relevance through repeated co-occurrence of your brand with specific topics.
Search Engine Journal notes that before chasing mentions, your site needs to be “special in every possible way”—meaning your fundamentals (technical SEO, structured data, on-page content) should be solid first.
Your blog is basically fuel for the LLM’s understanding of who you are and what you’re about. Every relevant post is another data point in your favor. It compounds over time.
And that compounding effect is the part people get impatient about—but you gotta trust the process here. Trust the process.
Tip 3: Use Press Releases to Spread Your Brand Everywhere
This one has always been around, but it’s starting to get more traction recently—and for good reason. Press releases scale mentions.
Here’s why press releases work so well for LLM SEO: remember what I said about LLMs searching everywhere? Google doesn’t care about your press release on a local news site. But the LLM very likely will. LLMs read wider.
And the beautiful part? You can buy these services affordably—legitimate press release distribution companies that can write the release and distribute it to real sources. Legit distribution matters.
Press releases: what they are vs. what they aren’t
What Press Releases Are NOT
Just another backlink tactic. This isn’t about link juice or Domain Authority. Google doesn’t weigh these heavily for rankings, and that’s fine because that’s not the goal here. This isn’t about rankings.
What Press Releases ARE
A way to get your brand name attached to something and distributed across dozens of legitimate sites. It’s about creating brand signals that LLMs can pick up during retrieval. It’s brand signal distribution.
And you can write news about anything. Sponsor something local, publish a milestone, announce a partnership—it doesn’t really matter what it is. The goal is ubiquity.
You want your brand showing up in places the AI is looking, and press release distribution sites are absolutely places the AI is looking. Be everywhere relevant.
Tip 4: The Secret Sauce — Work WITH Your Competition
Alright. This is the one. This is the tip that I’m certain helped us get into so many LLMs. This is the secret sauce.
And it’s counterintuitive as hell: don’t fight your competition—work with your competition. Work with them.
Say your topic is “best iPhone cases” and every time you ask ChatGPT or Perplexity, you’re never included. Here’s what you do: write an article about the top ten best iPhone cases and include your competitors. Include your competitors.
Yes, really. Cite them. Link to them. Give them a fair shake—even if you’re not the obvious winner at first glance. Be genuinely fair.
Writing competitor comparison articles positions you as an unbiased authority LLMs love to cite.
I wrote a bunch of these targeting different keywords related to our competitors, and our article was consistently cited as a source when LLMs answered questions like “top ten best [whatever].” Consistent citations followed.
And here’s the sneaky part: we put our brand in the number one position in the list, but not at the top of the article—towards the bottom. It reads unbiased.
The AI sees the title matching the comparison keyword it’s looking for, pulls the article, and our brand comes along for the ride. Your brand rides the query.
I strongly believe that this is a massive mover in getting your website and brand into the LLM’s brain. It moves the needle.
This aligns with what Mentionlytics calls “Answer Engine Optimization” (AEO): the goal isn’t just ranking, but being the referenced authority inside AI-generated answers. Be the referenced authority.
What LLMs Actually Look For (And Why This All Works)
Here’s what ties all four tactics together: LLMs don’t search the way Google does. They predict the most credible answer based on patterns, associations, and recurring brand references—plus, sometimes, real-time retrieval. They’re pattern-matching machines.
So when your brand shows up in blog posts, press releases, comparison articles, and backlinked pages—all within the same topical context—the AI starts to see a pattern. Patterns create trust.
“Oh, this brand keeps coming up when people talk about [your topic]. Must be relevant. Must be credible.” That’s the whole game. Build the pattern.
Make it impossible for the LLM to not know who you are. Force recognition through repetition.
| Tactic | Primary Benefit for LLMs | Effort Level | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backlinks (incl. lower-tier) | Increases brand signals across multiple indexed sources | Medium | Low to Medium |
| Blog Posts (topical silo) | Builds deep contextual relevance for your brand | Medium | Low (especially with AI assistance) |
| Press Release Distribution | Spreads brand mentions across legitimate news sources | Low | Varies widely; typically $50–$500+ per release depending on distribution tier |
| Competitor Comparison Articles | Positions brand as unbiased authority; directly cited by LLMs | High (strategic) | Low |
Frequently Asked Questions
There’s no fixed timeline because it depends on model training updates and how quickly retrieval systems index new content. For RAG-style tools like Perplexity or Bing Copilot, you might see results in weeks.
For models relying more on training data, it can take months or longer. Consistency is the multiplier.
Yes, but tooling is still early. You can manually test by asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity questions in your niche and checking whether your brand appears.
You can also explore tools like Otterly.AI and Profound that are building monitoring for AI brand mentions. Manual testing still matters.
Not at all. LLMs tend to favor relevance, frequency of mention, and contextual authority. A small brand with a focused strategy can outperform a bigger competitor that isn’t doing this. Size isn’t the advantage.
It overlaps, but it’s different enough to think about separately. Traditional SEO is about ranking on a results page; LLM visibility (AEO) is about being included in a synthesized answer. Success looks different.
No. Google still drives massive traffic and isn’t going anywhere soon. But if you’re only doing traditional SEO, you’re leaving a growing channel on the table—and a lot of the work overlaps anyway. Do both layers.
Final Thoughts
Look, I didn’t even need to read that Search Engine Land article to know what works here, because I already did it. I got my brands into LLM answers through these four tactics. I’ve already tested this.
Flood the web with backlinks (even the lower-tier ones), consistently publish relevant blog content, use press releases to distribute brand signals, and most importantly write competitor comparison articles that position you as the unbiased authority LLMs want to cite. Comparison posts are the lever.
The SEO world is changing fast, and the people who are executing instead of theorizing are gonna win. So stop reading about it and start executing. Start executing.
Write that comparison post today. Get that press release out this week. Give the LLMs so many reasons to mention you that they can’t ignore you. Make yourself unavoidable.