Ann Smarty

Co-founder of @smartyMktg, SEO, GEO/AEO, Reddit Marketing 😎 20+ years of SEO experience. I've seen it all 💪 Newsletter:

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Checking our clients' digital PR campaigns we did 6+ months ago, I am seeing them become the top cited sources for LLMs, even for pretty huge sites.

There's, of course, a lot into that (apart from the fact that LLMs do love citing stats):

✅ Solid organic findability (direct correlation with citability. PR projects that didn't end up ranking well in Google are not cited that well)
✅ Strategic (and ethical) seeding on Reddit

I've seen many studies that LLMs seem to "trust" sources that regularly publish authority-driving content (original research, whitepapers, etc). Whether it is because they are like people (original research makes people believe a site is kind of a big deal) or because of all other signals (mainly, organic search visibility), but it surely works!

Bottom line: If you want to get cited by LLMs, invest in original research in your niche!

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

There is YET ANOTHER study on what gets cited 🙄

I took one of the tested prompts, "best CRM for small business", ran it in ChatGPT... The fan-outs:

- best CRM software for small business 2026 HubSpot Zoho Pipedrive Salesforce Freshsales reviews
- HubSpot CRM pricing 2026 official
- Zoho CRM pricing 2026 official
- Pipedrive pricing 2026 official, etc.

Can you guess what got cited?

👉 Yeah, official pages of those solutions ChatGPT ALREADY KNEW ABOUT before searching...
👉 High-ranking URLs for the top fan-out
👉 Lots of TechRadar URLs (which happens to belong to Future plc which happens to be in partnership with OpenAI 🙂 ) These citations were included but didn't seem to influence the answer btw.

Getting cited is a real science, guys. Give me another study, please 🙄 🤣

[Practical Ecommerce @PracticalEcomm]

"Non-commodity" content, like EEAT and "helpful content," cannot be easily summarized by genAI without attribution. "Google's 'Non-Commodity' Push Isn't New." Via @seosmarty. https://t.co/Yj6RAZEfRe #seo #ecommerce

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Reddit meteoric growth in organic search is astounding, and not good news for the bottom of the funnel for most businesses. According to Semrush data (which is likely less than 1/3 of actual search data)

😱 Reddit ranks for about 2 MILLION queries containing "reviews" (These are reviews businesses have NO CONTROL OVER)
😱 About 500K of Reddit's ranking URLs and titles contain "SCAM" (Searchers seeing these in search may make a buying decision right away without clicking to verify)
😱 About 500K of Reddit's ranking URLs and titles contain "legit" (When your potential customer is questioning if your business is legit, would other Redditors be able to confirm that it is?)

Brands are not happy. I am often asked if I think this is long-term visibility or if they can hope Reddit will finally decline in visibility for their most important queries.

Well, Google didn't start ranking Google just because they wanted to :)

GOOGLE just FOLLOWED THEIR USER.

According to Semrush (again, this is not ALL Google's data),

✅ The word "reddit" is added to at least 9 MILLION queries Semrush knows about.
✅ This is over 100 MILLION searches a month. People want to know what Redditors think on that many topics.

Reddit is Google's users' DESTINATION. That's why Reddit is so visible in search, and consequently in LLMs (AI wants to give people what people need!)

The bottom line: I cannot predict the future but don't assume Reddit's visibility is because of high-level agreements with Google and OpenAI. The latter two just give users what they apparently need!

And start working on your Reddit strategy now (actually, you should have started a few years ago!)

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

@foley_seo Well, internal SEO teams need to show the executives that things are moving along! So these stupid metrics like DAs and scores are there for that reason, I think

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

"I grew my client's AI visibility from 15% - 40% in 6 weeks"

🙄

And then there's this screenshot showing how this guy managed to achieve better visibility than Salesforce and Zendesk in 6 weeks... 😆

Listen, if I were the owner of Lorikeet paying this guy, my first question would be, "Which prompts are we tracking?"

Because I can show better results in visibility without doing anything and just adding a new branded prompt every week :)

I hope no business believes these claims and does some research. This GEO/AEO industry is insane!!!!

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Google’s Official “AI Optimization” Guidelines https://t.co/Ebvz7hpCyX

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: When Google Says “AI Optimization” Is Just SEO, What Does It Mean? https://t.co/SQZMozcLjd via @LinkedIn

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

When Google Says “AI Optimization” Is Just SEO, What Does It Mean? https://t.co/OXAMecn2c0

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

@lilyraynyc I mean... You can vibe code a rank tracker, but it will not replace Semrush/Ahrefs. Google LLM visibility tools are more than tracking

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

@ematt @LarsLofgren SAME!!!

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

@LarsLofgren @DonovanNagel To be sure, back in the days, I often used their guides and listicles to solve my WP problems. It's been genuinely helpful!

[Practical Ecommerce @PracticalEcomm]

"Google's 'Non-Commodity' Push Isn't New" | @seosmarty reminds us that Google has long emphasized one-of-a-kind content. Like EEAT before it, non-commodity content is not easily summarized or recycled by generative AI without attribution. https://t.co/Yj6RAZDI1G #seo #ecommerce

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

😎 SEO vs GEO vs AEO, Explained Like You Are Five :) https://t.co/0q4aQ7iaNu via @YouTube

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Stole this into my subreddit!

https://t.co/HsqSA6Lvx1

[David Konitzny @DavidKonitzny]

Your navigation might be eating your LLM reading budget ⁉️
We took a closer look at how pages are actually read in ChatGPT Deep Research, to understand what's really happening under the hood.

On its first visit, Deep Research reads each page through a fixed window of about 5,700 characters. The heavier a page's navigation, the less of that budget is left for your content.

We grouped pages by how many navigation links they carry:

➡️ 𝗟𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (under 20 links) About 𝟳𝟴% of the first read is your actual content. This is what a clean, content-first page looks like.

➡️ 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘂𝗺 (20–59 links) About 𝟱𝟱%. Nearly half the read is already spent on navigation and markup, and this is where most pages land.

➡️ 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝘃𝘆 𝗻𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (60+ links) Only about 𝟯𝟯%. Two-thirds of the read goes links before the model even reaches your answer.

So on cluttered sites, more than half the reading budget is gone before your real content even begins.

[smarty.marketing @smartyMktg]

Here is a great guide @CyrusShepard shared during his AMA in our subreddit on content types/strategies that can help your brand survive Google Zero (AKA the No-Click Era).

Full AMA here, chock-full of expert insights: https://t.co/wc1SpwDdQS

#SEO #ContentMarketing #Reddit

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Reddit for LLM Insights and the GEO Strategy https://t.co/rxLIKTy6bU

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

The best part of Reddit that not many experts discuss: It works GREAT for audience insights, sentiment analysis, content brainstorming, and more! Here's how I use Reddit as a powerful intelligence! https://t.co/N0Fzso4ciV

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Reddit for LLM Insights and GEO Strategy https://t.co/xIJTct0LAz

[Practical Ecommerce @PracticalEcomm]

"How Reddit Drives GenAI Visibility" | @seosmarty explains how Reddit is ChatGPT's leading source of answers. She provides essential steps on @Reddit for building trust and authority. https://t.co/TgWmthMoMh #ecommerce