AI isn’t just rewriting how we search—it’s reshuffling the entire SEO playbook. Everything Branding, an award-winning PR and digital marketing agency, today announced its AEO Growth Program, a service designed to help brands stay visible in the age of AI-powered search engines and large language models (LLMs).
Why AEO Is the New SEO
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) has become a hot topic as tools like Google’s Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity replace traditional keyword-based search. Unlike old-school SEO, which revolved around backlinks and metadata, AEO focuses on securing press coverage that LLMs cite as trusted sources.
And the stats back up the urgency:
- 70% of AI-powered search results pull from press articles, per a MuckRack study.
- 71.5% of consumers now use AI tools for search, according to Search Engine Land.
- Google’s Gemini prominently elevates press-sourced answers, signaling a pivot away from keyword-first rankings.
In short: if your brand isn’t in the media, you may not exist in AI-driven search.
Press Is the New SEO
Chelsea Gladden, CEO of Everything Branding, put it bluntly:
“With AI search engines and LLMs now pulling recommendations from high-authority media sources, brands without press coverage risk becoming invisible online.”
Everything Branding’s AEO Growth Program promises to secure strategic press placements engineered for AI discoverability. Instead of pitching generic PR stories, the agency crafts LLM-friendly content—keyword-rich, editor-friendly, and designed to be indexed by answer engines.
How It Works
The program isn’t about “spray and pray” press outreach. It’s built around studying editorial trends, LLM indexing patterns, and AI-powered search behaviors. The result? Brands enjoy:
- Higher rankings in AI-powered search
- Increased mentions in LLM product recommendations
- Visibility across platforms like Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity
This approach marks a significant departure from conventional SEO, which struggles to keep pace with AI’s shift toward sourcing from media outlets rather than keyword-optimized webpages.
The Bigger Picture
Everything Branding isn’t alone in spotting this shift. Agencies and in-house teams alike are scrambling to understand how AI-driven discovery could upend Google’s ad revenue model and the broader SEO industry. If AEO takes off, the battle for press coverage may soon matter more than backlink strategies—a shift that could make PR agencies more central to digital marketing than ever before.
For brands navigating an increasingly AI-curated internet, the message is clear: if you’re not in the press, you’re not in the results.
