Challenge
The challenge for me was twofold. The first was to remain consistent in posting an article on this website on a regular cadence of my choice. And second, to implement the adapted SEO tactics or AEO tactics to increase online visibility for AI search engines and “traditional” search engines.
What I did
I have been creating blog posts quite consistently for the past few months, April 2025 – present for datauntangled.com I have been trying to include not only best practices of “traditional” SEO but also any of the new tactics that have been suggested for AEO, AI engine optimization, during this period.
I have structured my content in a very specific way. Whether or not it is the optimal way, I don’t know, but it includes many of the tactics that have been floating around and developing over the past few months to gain online visibility and visibility in AI search.
This structure has included
- An introduction at the beginning of the article
- A table of contents
- A definition, if necessary, at the start of the articles
- Bullet point and lists wherever possible to help bring the content up into chunks.
- Content was divided up into chunks separated by headers.
- A summary of the article is provided at the end.
- A short FAQ based on the topic of the article that includes 3-5 questions and answers.
- And a short list of references where appropriate.
- Implementing schema (blog post schema and FAQ)
I created on average one blog post per week. The more recent blog posts were paired with a LinkedIn carousel post that goes live every Monday morning at 9:30am EST.
Results
Given all the talk about traffic and clicks, in particular, decreasing since AI search engines like chatgpt and others have been evolving and taking some Google search traffic and more zero click content in the form of AI overviews on Google itself, I was surprised with the results.
- Clicks increase by 91% over the last 3 months
- Impressions increased by 41% over the last 3 months.
- *Organic traffic increased by 168% over the last 28 days.
- CTR increased from 0 to 0.2% over the last 3 months
- Average Position increased 6% over the last 3 months.
* Note, for organic traffic I didn’t show the 3 month period because the traffic increased on all channels over the last 3 months with the largest increase being organic.
Overall, it was a success.
Clicks and impressions have been increasing.
Looking at the comparison of the last 3 months with the previous three months, it’s great.
From GA4 the only traffic channel that increased in the past three months compared to the previous three months was organic. Direct is still greater, but it has decreased as well as all the other traffic channels.
Everything has moved in the right direction, however small a move. Click through rate and average position hasn’t increased much but the total clicks and impressions has, which is pleasantly surprising.
Given all the discussion around AI search engines and how it is affecting traffic and “SEO”, these results support that.
- First, all these posts are recent, that is within the last 12 months.
- I have done my best to adhere to a structure, mentioned above, for my posts that fulfill as many of the criteria to increase online visibility and to be discovered and mentioned by AI search engines. Given the impressions have increased, this is supported.
- I have made efforts to include “question” words like “where”, “how”, “when” etc. and long, very long tail keywords.
The increase in impressions supports that these changes do indeed help increase online visibility. Also, with the update that ai overview are also being including impressions, this would also add to the increase of impressions.
Understanding the Results
How could clicks have increased and organic search have increased? There are a few possibilities that come to mind:
- People scrolled down and clicked on a webpage in datauntangled.com (doubtful! Does anyone scroll down below the fold anymore??)
- A webpage from datauntangled.com was among the organic SERP above the fold.
- Some content from a webpage on data untangled was in a zero click item. This could include a rich snippet of some kind, a definition or an AI overview.
- A webpage from datauntangled.com showed up in a ChatGPT or some other AI search engine citation and then it was clicked.
Very curious!
Regardless, some of the tactics are working and online visibility is increasing on this site that really didn’t have much going for it prior to Dec 2024 and even then, it was just a little bit of activity.
Conclusion
The first challenge of posting regularly and consistently over a period of time, was a struggle but accomplished!
From the results of less than 3 months worth of weekly blog posts, we can say that implementing the tactics to optimize for AI search engines while incorporating SEO best practices does in fact increase online visibility. AI and its effects on search are evolving rapidly so who knows how things will change. But for now, these AEO content optimization tactics are leading to positive results. The second challenge was also completed and a success!
Going forward
Now it’s time to implement some of the other tactics and see if those make a difference
Starting with, refreshing content that is over 12 months old.
- The first step will be to do an audit on the blog posts for blog content to determine how it has changed and update the contents of the content.
- Second will be the blog structure. Implementing the structural components mentioned above to posts older than 12 months.
To be continued!
