You've spent years optimizing for Google. Keywords, backlinks, meta descriptions. You know the game.
Now there's a new game, and the rules are different.
LLMO in plain English
LLMO stands for LLM Optimization. It's about making your content work better with the AI systems that power ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and their friends.
While GEO specifically targets AI search (getting recommended when people ask questions), LLMO is the broader discipline. It's about how these language models process, understand, and use your content in any context.
How these AI models actually work
Here's something that trips people up: ChatGPT isn't searching a database when you ask it a question. It's generating a response based on patterns it learned during training, sometimes pulling in fresh info from the web.
This changes things. Your content can influence AI in two ways.
If it was part of the training data, the AI has "learned" from it. But it's mixed in with millions of other sources, so the signal gets diluted. More importantly, many AI tools now search the web in real-time and use what they find to craft answers. This is called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Your current content matters here. A lot.
LLMO vs what you're already doing for SEO
Some things overlap. Good content helps everywhere. But the emphasis shifts.
SEO obsesses over keywords. LLMO cares about concepts and entities. Did you explain the relationship between ideas clearly? Does AI understand what you're actually talking about?
SEO loves backlinks. LLMO looks at whether authoritative sources cite you. Being mentioned in a respected industry publication signals trustworthiness to AI.
SEO worries about crawlability and page speed. LLMO cares whether your content is machine-readable in a different sense. Can AI easily extract the key points? Are your ideas structured logically?
Making your content LLMO-friendly
Write like you're explaining to a smart person who doesn't know your jargon. AI models understand meaning, not keyword density. Clear explanations of complex topics get cited. Buzzword soup doesn't.
Be the source people quote. If you want AI to recommend you, create content worth recommending. Original research, comprehensive guides, expert takes on industry topics.
Structure helps a lot. FAQ sections, comparison tables, clear headings. These formats make it easy for AI to find and use specific information. When someone asks "what's the difference between X and Y?", content that's already structured as a comparison gets pulled.
Stay consistent about who you are. Your brand name, what you do, who you help. When that information is consistent across your website, social profiles, and industry mentions, AI builds a clearer picture and recommends you more confidently.
Why this matters more every month
AI isn't a niche anymore. Hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT. Perplexity is growing fast. When someone asks "what tool should I use for X?", they're not clicking through 10 Google results to decide. They're taking the AI's recommendation and moving on.
If your content isn't LLMO-optimized, you're invisible to those users. They'll never know you exist.