Write content → build links → rank → get traffic → win.
❌ You didn’t need a brand.
❌ You didn’t need recognition.
You just needed to know how to game the system better than the next person.
That era is ending (or has ended already).
LLMs don’t care if your blog has 10k backlinks.
They don’t even “see” links the way Google does.
They care about:
✅ Who’s talking about you (brand mentions)
✅ Whether you’re known in a space (brand search)
✅ If your brand has associations with relevant topics (cosine similarity)
Here’s what this means
1. Less traffic from AI search
Even if you are mentioned in ChatGPT or Perplexity, most users don’t click out. They get their answer inside the interface, and that’s the end of it. You might be getting visibility… but no visit to show for it.
2. Brand discovery ≠ attribution
Users see your brand in an AI answer. They don’t act right away, but a few days later, they Google your name and convert. That traffic gets logged as “organic search,” not AI. So you underestimate the real impact of LLMs.
3. Links are out, mentions are in
AI search doesn’t reward backlinks. It rewards presence: mentions, associations, and citations. This makes digital PR, podcasts, and online buzz way more valuable than old-school link building.
You’ll only win in an AI search world if people are searching for your brand on their own.
Now, maybe you’re thinking: “We’re safe, people still Google in our space.”
Sure. But even Google has been rewarding brands for years. If you’re “SEO optimized” but have no real presence, you’re already getting pushed down.
The “optimize and rank” strategy might not work anymore. You gotta be worth mentioning.
seo saas contentstrategy b2b b2bmarketing digitalmarketing seostrategy
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.