The Search Game Has Changed. Are You Still Playing the Old One?
There was a time (not so long ago) when SEO was the golden ticket. Write a great blog, optimise your title tag, wrangle some backlinks, and you’d find yourself climbing the Google ladder, step by strategic step. But here’s the thing: that ladder? It’s not the only way up anymore.
We’ve just read that Sam Hogan article, the one lighting up LinkedIn like a Christmas tree, and yes, it’s worth the fuss because it captures something we’ve all been sensing: the shift. The quiet but seismic pull away from ranking pages toward quoting answers.
It’s not about the long-form blog anymore. It’s about the line that gets picked.
From Pages to Passages
In the new world of AI-generated search with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews, the rules have changed. These systems don’t care what position your blog lands in. They’re not clicking. They’re compressing.
What they’re really doing is hunting for confident, repeated, well-structured sentences to include in their answers. The clearer you are, the faster you show up.
No faffing about. No 300-word intros. No clever, rambling metaphors (and trust us, that hurts to say).
So What Does This Mean for Content?
It means structure matters more than ever. Not for readability. For quotability.
Think headers that ask real questions. Answers that live in the first two lines. Bullets. Steps. Schema. Clean HTML. Clarity.
Your content needs to be skimmable by humans and extractable by machines. Not poetic prose. Not flair for flair’s sake. Just clean, confident answers that an LLM would bet its reputation on.
But Wait, Are We Just Writing for Robots Now?
No. And this is where we add our two cents.
The article, brilliant as it is, skews hard toward structure and simplicity. While that’s essential for LLMs, it’s only half the story. Because we still need to write for the people who land on our pages. Not just the AI that gets them there.
We still need to sound like us. We still need tone and warmth and the kind of language that makes readers feel something. So yes, let’s optimise for quotability, but let’s not strip out the soul.
Our approach? Build dual-purpose content.
Lead with structure: questions, answers, schema, clean formatting.
Follow with story: the voice, the connection, the why-it-matters.
Presence Over Clicks
Sam makes a great point: in the age of AI, visibility isn’t just about traffic anymore. It’s about being part of the answer.
Will every mention drive a user to your site? Probably not. But if your brand is consistently quoted in AI summaries, it builds familiarity. And familiarity builds trust.
Think of it as modern-day brand awareness, showing up in the right conversations even if you don’t get the mic.
What to Do Now
Here’s how we’re shifting our mindset (and what we’re recommending to clients):
Audit your top pages for answer-readiness.
Add schema markup (especially FAQs, How-Tos).
Refresh your intros. Lead with the answer.
Check your brand mentions across the web. Can you get into some roundups?
Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity your target queries. Are you showing up?
This is early days stuff. Most brands haven’t even clocked the shift yet.
But if you’re reading this? You’re already ahead.
Let’s write for what comes next, not just for what used to work.
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