5 "AI SEO" tactics: keep or skip?
A new category with a lot of confident advice and not much evidence behind it.
Search is changing, that part is real. Most of the tactics being sold around it are either ordinary SEO with new vocabulary or untested guesswork. Here is where I have landed.
Checking whether you block AI crawlers
A one line change in robots.txt that a surprising number of sites got wrong years ago and never revisited. Free, takes two minutes, occasionally transformative.
Making your facts easy to extract
Clear headings, direct answers near the top, consistent naming of your own products. This is also just good writing, which is why it is safe to invest in.
Paying for "AI visibility optimisation" with no measurement plan
Ask any vendor how they will show the result and over what period. If the answer is vague, the service is vague.
Keyword stuffing for AI, in any form
Whatever the new version of this is called, it is the old version, and it has always been a short term trade against a long term cost.
Being cited by sources the models already trust
Trade press, industry bodies, well-known publications. This is digital PR, it predates all of this, and it still works.
The honest summary: about eighty per cent of good AI search practice is good SEO and good PR. The remaining twenty is worth watching and not yet worth a budget line.