In 2025, search has evolved far beyond simple keyword matching and blue links. The new competitive frontier is defined by multimodal experiences, including generative AI answers (such as AI Overviews), enriched search engine results pages (SERP) features, and Google’s stringent “people-first” quality filters. Optimise your content for machine-readability, quick loading, and genuine value for human users, as user attention spans shrink. This demonstrates clear expertise.
Here are seven tactical, executive-level tips you can implement immediately to protect and expand your organic visibility and brand equity.
1) Start with SERP & intent intelligence
To improve your website’s visibility, start by analysing the search results for your target keywords. See if Google is showing AI Overviews, featured snippets, local packs, or video carousels. Build your page to match what Google already surfaces for a specific user’s intent. Start by answering the user’s primary question, then add more detailed information. Optimising for these SERP features is now a fundamental part of getting noticed online.
To put this into practice, look at the top-ranking pages and identify their main headings. Pay attention to the “People Also Ask” section to discover common questions users are searching for. Then, craft a concise and direct answer block that you could easily extract as a snippet or cite. This will directly address user intent and increase your chances of being featured at the top of search results.
2) Make ‘people-first’ content your north star
When it comes to creating content that resonates and ranks, a people-first approach should be your guiding principle. Google’s ranking systems are designed to reward helpful, reliable content that genuinely benefits the reader. This is the essence of E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. To build this trust, you must demonstrate genuine credibility in the real world. This means leveraging real authorship, incorporating primary data and unique analysis, and citing your sources. Especially for high-stakes topics like business and technology, where accuracy is paramount. You can only unlock the true value of AI-generated text after a human expert has thoroughly reviewed and enhanced it.
3) Structure for humans and machines: headings, summaries, and schema
Optimising content for both human readers and artificial intelligence requires a dual-pronged approach. For human readability and easy extraction by AI, it’s essential to use a clear, logical HTML structure. This includes using appropriate headings (H1, H2, etc.) to organise your content, breaking up large blocks of text into short paragraphs, and utilising bullet points to present information concisely.
This structured layout not only enhances the user experience but also facilitates easier parsing and understanding of the content by AI and answer engines.
To help search engines and AI truly comprehend the meaning of your content, you should implement structured data. This is typically added using JSON-LD and acts as a bridge, providing explicit context about the entities on your page. By using relevant schema types such as FAQ Schema for common questions and answers, Article or Product Schema for blog posts or e-commerce pages, and HowTo Schema for instructional content, you enable search engines to surface rich results that stand out in search queries.
Regularly testing your implementation with tools like Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator ensures that your structured data is correct and effective.
4) Optimise for the AI layer (GEO / AEO)
To get your website noticed by AI search engines, you need to think about Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). This means structuring your content so that large language models (LLMs) can easily use it to provide direct answers.
To do this, you should create a concise “answer card” at the top of your page. Write a short paragraph of 40-70 words that directly answers a key question. Include more detailed, supporting sections that provide in-depth information. Make sure this content is based on verifiable facts and links back to your domain, as this helps establish your site as a credible source.
By optimising your site this way, you can control how AI describes your brand and gain visibility even as traditional clicks change.
5) Page experience is a ranking & trust signal
Improving a website’s page experience is no longer just an optional task; it’s a critical factor for both search rankings and user trust. Metrics like Core Web Vitals, which measure things like a page’s loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift), are essential.
Slow or unstable pages can damage your search ranking and hurt conversions. After all, strong performance is a sign of trust for both executives and customers. It’s important to treat page experience as a key performance indicator (KPI), not just a technical issue. To improve your site’s performance, start by measuring LCP, INP, and CLS using data from real users. Then, focus on optimising the critical rendering path, compressing images, and addressing any mobile user experience issues before you begin a major content rewrite.
6) Build topical authority with clusters and internal linking
Crafting a strong content strategy that builds topical authority is crucial for establishing your expertise and improving search engine rankings. Instead of creating isolated, single pages, you should adopt a clustered approach centred around a pillar page. A pillar page is a comprehensive, high-value resource that serves as the central hub for a broad, important topic.
The content cluster model operates like a tightly-knit network. You create several in-depth cluster pages—also known as supporting articles or subtopics—that delve into specific aspects of the main pillar topic. For example, if your pillar page is about “digital marketing,” your cluster pages could cover topics like “SEO best practices,” “email marketing strategies,” and “social media advertising.”
The real power of this model lies in internal linking. Each cluster page should have contextual anchor text that links back to the main pillar page. These links act as signposts for search engines, signaling the relationships between your content and demonstrating your deep expertise on the subject. This interconnected structure helps distribute page authority and ensures that search engines can easily discover and index your pages.
By creating a logical flow of information, you’ll keep users engaged. This, in turn, increases session depth and provides more opportunities for conversions. To ensure the best user experience and search engine crawlability, keep your click depth shallow, meaning users should be able to reach any page on your site within a few clicks from the homepage.
7) Measure, iterate, and protect your AI presence
Tracking your brand’s AI presence is crucial for protecting and growing your visibility in the digital landscape. In addition to traditional SEO metrics like impressions, clicks, and rankings, you should also monitor new signals, such as citations in AI Overviews and mentions by other large language models.
These AI citations are essentially a new form of brand placement that requires careful monitoring and reputation management. You should make tracking your AI visibility a standard part of your monthly reports, using emerging tools and platforms to measure your performance. From there, you can run experiments with your content—for example, by adjusting your answer formatting or implementing new schema changes—and quickly roll back any changes that negatively impact your conversion rates.
This approach allows you to continuously adapt and improve your content for a new era of search.
Ranking in 2025 is less about chasing trends and more about creating resilient, trustworthy content that is both human-centric and machine-readable. For business and tech leaders, the winning formula is straightforward: invest in genuine expertise, ensure your content is machine-friendly, measure what truly matters, and iterate quickly based on what you learn.