4 AI SEO tactics that replace your old top-of-funnel playbook
If you have been treating AI search like a traffic channel, the numbers are not on your side. Tom Capper at Moz just published a breakdown of how the top-of-funnel SEO playbook needs to change, and the core finding is blunt: what you put on your own site matters a lot less than it used to.
The citation problem
An AirOps study cited by Capper found that 85% of AI citations come from third-party sites, not from the brand being discussed. A separate First Page Sage analysis found commercial and brand sites account for only about 5% of citations across AI responses. Journalistic and media publishing accounts for the largest share by a wide margin.
The implication: your first-party content strategy has a narrow ceiling in AI search. The real leverage is off your own domain.
On traffic: Capper notes that most sites he has seen peaked at under 2% of their traffic coming from AI sources like Gemini and ChatGPT, with some data showing that number declining. For now, chasing AI as a traffic channel will likely disappoint.
The 4-tactic playbook
Capper’s recommended response centers on impressions and mentions rather than traffic. Here are the four strategies he outlines:
- Digital PR, citation-first. Identify which third-party sites are being cited in AI responses for your category, then reach out to get your brand mentioned correctly in those articles. This is not about links. Capper notes sponsored advertorial on publisher sites becomes more interesting here because the no-follow concern matters less when LLMs may ingest the content regardless of link attributes.
- Barnacle SEO. Control your presence on high-authority third-party properties: Wikipedia, YouTube, Crunchbase, industry-specific directories. Capper points out this applies not just to branded queries but to what he calls soft-branded prompts, queries that are not explicitly about a brand but whose answers will name one. If someone asks what the best phone for filming video is, a brand answer is coming, and your YouTube channel or Wikipedia entry influences it.
- UGC and community. How your brand shows up on Reddit, review sites, and third-party YouTube channels matters and is harder to control. Capper flags this as the area that pushes furthest outside the traditional SEO comfort zone.
- Information consistency. Make sure every profile, listing, and third-party mention of your brand has consistent, accurate, complete data. No contradictions between sources. Bonus: if you have proprietary data or stats that no competitor can replicate, that is the best opportunity to increase your own-site citation percentage.
How to measure it
Capper’s measurement advice reframes what counts as a KPI. Mentions and impressions are the output metric. Citation data (which sites are being cited in prompts you track) becomes the tactical input that tells you where to focus your outreach, not the result you are optimizing for.
If you run any top-of-funnel content strategy, this is the mental model shift to make now.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
With over 14 years in tech, marketing, and AI, including my role as Head of SEO at CitizenShipper and co-founder of TaleBot at Intale AI, I’m dedicated to sharing genuine, useful product insights and tips.
At BizStack, I aim to cut through the digital noise to provide clear, actionable advice.
And more than all else, I’m a father to a (always) little girl and a husband.
Contact me at [email protected] for assistance.
