maya SEO

Summary:
1) Prioritize context and natural wording over repetition and keywords (but don’t completely replace, obviously).
2) Give context by fully exploring specific details (such as a specific solution to a specific problem) rather than general overviews of broader topics (such as all the solutions for a certain type of problem).
3) Instead of fitting ourselves into robotic standards of ‘how many keywords do I have’ or ‘how long are visitors spending on my site,’ AI algorithms reward us for fulfilling our natural standards of ‘how thoroughly can I understand this concept’ and ‘how quickly can I get what I need?’

As of 2025, 63% of sites are getting visitors referred to them by AI chatbots; and smaller sights are getting the largest share on average. So, how do you rank to be referenced in AI algorithms? The good news is that things are significantly more intuitive in the ‘new SEO’ than in traditional SEO. However, there’s also a lot more nuance for putting it into practice than before, as well.

You can click here to learn more about the ‘new SEO’ paradigm and how it is effecting commercial content as a whole, but in this article we will focus specifically on practices for ranking in AI references—which are especially crucial as Google’s search AI (powered by Gemini AI) has evolved to dominate the top half of every search result.

First, what are AI references? When you ask a question in an AI chatbot terminal, as opposed to a traditional search engine, in will give you an answer, while linking a few citations for the concepts and context given in its answers. This gives content creators greater opportunities to be referred to; especially content creators who, despite not being as ‘search engine optimized,’ are investing much more time and effort into crafting concise, enjoyable content.

This is because, while keywords continue to serve their traditional function, their importance is reduced to a categorization device. AI is able to interpret context better and better every day, and is built to value saving time by providing information as simply as possible and leaving out filler. This is very different from traditional search standards, which benefit from dense wording to stack-up keywords, and keeping visitors confused and distracted as long as possible on their site to increase domain authority in a certain keyword.

In other words, including one or two keywords in an article which focuses on providing information quickly and relying on contextual wording to cut down on repetition and literalism will be rewarded much more in the new paradigm than a keyword-dense article with repetitive filler to satisfy algorithm standards. Currently, the time a visitor spends on your site significantly increases it’s ranking in Google’s algorithm. You can profit from this by thoroughly exploring a single detail (such as a specific solution to a single problem) without being repetitive, which keeps readers interested in a single page rather than skimming through insights and hopping onto another page—either on your site, or more likely; back into Google’s search results.

However, as AI abilities continues to grow in search engine relevance, as in seen with Google’s search AI, we will (and already are beginning to) see the speed with which a person—or AI algorithm—gets what they need become more important that time spent on a site. 

How will this be measured differently from traffic which quickly backs out, unsatisfied? With AI searches, the AI response already provides a summarized and/or quoted answer to the user’s question, including a link to the source—your site. Your traffic comes from an already-satisfied visitor wanting more details. This makes the time they spend on your site even more valuable, but this is because visitors become much higher maintenance. Since they’ve already received the answer they’re looking for, they’re only going to stay if new, detailed information is being provided with a comfortable flow—natural wording and minimal repetition/filler. Time-wasting, unoriginal filler (aka practically anything written by AI), as well as oversimplification (provided a few bullet points with either no elaboration, or keyword-filler elaboration) will be, and already is, penalized.

And what makes AI quote and reference your site as well as others? One of the innovations of AI is that people can ask much more specific, natural questions that wouldn’t have previously yielded the best results in search engines. Additionally, AI often cites several references for the answers it gives, and takes other factors (such as perceived rationality and flow) into consideration as much or more-so than search engine ranking. Thus, through specificity, several-part series of interlinked articles exploring those specifics to exhaustion, and traditional keyword basics; you’ll have an ever-growing opportunity to be referenced in a wider and wider range of queries.

In conclusion, AI has, ironically, become a great equalizer for small, hard-working content creators who have been continuously pushed into shadows by incumbents who can pay-to-play their way up the search-engine ranks and flood the algorithm with repetitive, robotic content (whether it was actually written by a robot or increasingly under-paid freelancers alienated from creativity.) It is also, ironically, making algorithms function more intuitively. It seems like this is only the beginning.