AI answer engines are here and they are changing the way users search the internet. Companies like Perplexity are testing brands and marketers to keep up with changing technology. We believe even with these changes, it’s still possible for you to be a leading source on Perplexity and out-rank your competitors!
In this blog post, we break down why Perplexity needs to be a part of your search engine optimization (SEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) strategies outlining how to rank on Perplexity and optimize your content. We also outline 3 helpful tips on how to use Perplexity to help your brand’s SEO strategy.
Looking to increase your brand’s organic visibility through answer engines?
Why Perplexity should be part of your SEO & AEO Strategy
Perplexity AI has an opportunity to be a go-to search engine for users, currently hosting around 10 million active monthly users. There is still a lot of space for growth but it’s clear users are interested. Perplexity uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and Large Language Model (LLM) to give users a clear summary of relevant topics. Perplexity’s data has no cut-off date and can access the web for current information. This makes it a competitor of Gemini and the incoming SearchGPT. Since each of these AI-powered search engines has different knowledge cut-offs and retrieves information from differing sources, marketers need to create tailored strategies for AI-powered search.
SEO is changing and AEO is the next step that brands and marketers must take seriously. Users want a search experience that is more of a conversation, allowing for follow-up questions as if they were in the room with the answer engine. Perplexity’s goal is to do just that. Create a conversation with a user. This change means regular SEO can no longer be relied on to rank in AI search engines. Brands and marketers have a problem, how to rank when companies like Perplexity no longer follow the same ranking as Google?
How to Rank on Perplexity
Similar to ChatGPT, Perplexity relies on quality content that comes from authoritative voices. Unlike other search engines, say Gemini, Perplexity gives a lot of value to sources that are user-generated such as Reddit. If you ask Perplexity how it ranks user-generated content it will tell you that user-generated content should be looked at together with authoritative websites. This answer emphasizes Perplexity’s desire to center its content around the user’s intent while still weighing experience and authority.
What Is User Intent and Why Is It Important?
Understanding the underlying reasoning for a user’s query lets your brand create material that is relevant and practical to a user. Understanding these types of users can help you create better content related to their needs. It can improve your search rankings, give users a better experience, and increase conversions. There are four types of user intent:
- Informational Intent – This query would be asked to find definitions and learn more about a topic. For example, “What is an AI-Chatbot?”
- Navigational Intent – A user wants to find a website or specific webpage. For example, “TikTok login.”
- Transactional Intent – The user wants to purchase a product or complete an action. For example, “I want to buy a computer”
- Commercial Intent – A user is conducting research about a product or service before making a purchase decision. For example, “What are the best Fintech companies 2024.”
Keep these different user types in mind when optimizing for Perplexity and when using Perplexity for SEO.
4 Ways to Optimize Your Content for Perplexity
1. Build Presence on Online Communities
Encourage reviews
Incentivize consumers to post reviews on websites after positive experiences with your company. The goal is visibility. The more your brand is mentioned on review sites the higher chance you will have of Perplexity picking up your brand. Many review sites are industry specific. By prioritizing sites that fit your business you’ll reach your target audience.
Actively contribute to industry-specific conversations
Post on sites like Reddit, Quora, and other niche communities that align with your business either under your business name or through a representative. This drives brand engagement and can alert you of any concerns consumers have with your product. For instance, if you’re in tech, contributing to subreddits like r/technology or answering questions about your product on Quora in tech-related spaces will enhance brand visibility. Create community-driven spaces to engage directly with customers. Since Perplexity often pulls sources from user-generated content the more your brand is discussed the more likely Perplexity will pick up information about your product.
Respond to all reviews
Answer engines like Perplexity favor content that is human-centered and focuses on content that answers both the original query and has answers ready for potential follow-up questions. By responding to reviews, both positive and negative, you can drive engagement with your brand by showing that you care about your consumers. Perplexity takes this information into consideration when deciding its sources for a question. More engagement with your brand from real consumers adds credibility to your company.
2. Build Presence on Authoritative Websites
Specific to your industry
Prioritize content generation on websites that specialize in your industry. Look for sites with high traffic, good domain authority, and strong community engagement. For example, companies that work in the Fintech space should ensure they are listed on reputable sites such as NerdWallet and The Motley Fool, contributing to articles like “Best personal finance Apps” or “Top 10 Fintech Startups to Watch.” Types of content:
- Product Reviews: Request that your product be reviewed by leading websites through paid partnerships
- Top 10 Lists: Aim to be featured in lists related to your industry.
- Comparison Posts: Write content comparing your product to competitors. Posts that include competitor comparisons will be more likely to rank on Perplexity for questions asking to compare top products to each other.
- Case Studies: Share examples of how your product helped a customer or how your product fills a need in your industry.
Interviews with experts in the field
Similarly to Google Perplexity values experience and expertise. Writing content with experts is a way to increase your chance of ranking as a source on Perplexity. Steps to consider when creating content with an expert.
- List relevant qualifications, certificates and expertise to highlight expertise.
- Ensure links to published content, guides, and whitepapers that cover the topics to establish your brand’s credibility.
3. Quality and Style of Content
High-Quality Content
Write fresh content about your brand on topics you haven’t written about in the past. The content should be comprehensive, cover topics in detail including definitions and preemptively address topics of confusion in your post. Content should support your brand’s objectives and goals instead of creating a lot of content, yet missing the substance.
User-centered
Create content that can answer multiple questions within one content piece. To optimize for Perplexity your web page should address multiple questions that could be asked in a sequence to each other. One way of finding what sort of questions a user would ask as a follow-up would be by asking Perplexity a question related to the topic you are writing about. After the generated content there is a list of questions that are “related”. You can use this list to make sure your content can answer any one of these questions.
If you have one piece of content that addresses topics in multiple questions, perplexity is more likely to recommend your product/ content to the user. Web pages can be structured to answer multiple questions using clear headers and shortlists that directly and clearly answer one or more of these follow-up questions.
Clarity
Text should be written for both humans and AI, promoting natural language processing. This means your text could be easily read aloud, like when speaking or easily summarized by AI. There are certain similarities between having high-quality content and making sure it is clear. Things like having lists, definitions, and headings with subheadings will improve the clarity of your content. Perplexity can easily summarize this information and provide users with a shortened version of your content.
4. Detailed FAQs
Top 3 Tips on How to Use Perplexity AI for SEO
1. Keyword Searching
Use Perplexity to search for keywords that are popular in your industry and related to your target audience.
- The first step is to choose your focus area on Perplexity. This will tailor your search to a specific context.
2. Create a Prompt that is clear and specific. For example, “Give me 20 keyword ideas for [your topic]”
3. To make your prompt even clearer, you can include specific parameters such as “low competition keywords.” Once a list of keywords is created, you should look at the follow-up questions suggested by Perplexity to help identify topics and categories that you might not have originally considered.
2. Reverse Engineer User Intent
First, create a question related to your brand or your offered products. Decide which of the four types of users you are targeting. Users ask informational, navigational, transactional or commercial questions. Ask Perplexity these questions and it will generate a summary with links. At the bottom of the page there is a list of additional questions that users could ask related to your question. This is a hint at what people are interested in searching for.
3. Check Content for Clarity
Use Perplexity to check how well your written content will perform using defined SEO criteria. Give Perplexity a checklist and ask it to check whether it recommends different headlines that would perform better or if there is any content missing. For example, things that you can include in your checklist if asking Perplexity to check your headline are:
- Keyword inclusion: make sure your keyword incorporates your primary target keyword.
- Length optimization: headline shouldn’t be more than 55 characters.
- Clarity and Relevance: ensure the title aligns with your content’s topic.
- Uniqueness: use Perplexity to search for other headlines with the same title.
It is important to still check any content that Perplexity writes for you. It isn’t perfect and, although much improved, can still hallucinate irrelevant content.
The Future of Perplexity AI and AEO
Perplexity AI values quality content that can be formatted in a conversational tone. It may seem daunting to tackle ranking on the many answer engines that are being developed but it is worth it. If you focus your content on client intent then ranking won’t be nearly as hard as it seems.
The positive with perplexity is that it isn’t, yet, a “winner-takes-all” situation, unlike Google’s AI Overview. With quality content you’ll be able to rank!
