The CMO of a Latin American fintech discovered something revealing in a strategy meeting. When their team asked Perplexity "what are the best payment platforms for e-commerce in LATAM?", the answer mentioned four competitors, describing their advantages in detail. Their company didn't even appear as a passing mention.
That meeting marked a before and after: brand visibility is no longer built only with advertising, SEO or content. It's built in the answers generated by artificial intelligence engines. If Perplexity, ChatGPT or Google AI don't mention your brand when they answer questions about your industry, you're invisible to a growing share of your potential customers.
Key strategies to win visibility with AI
Building visibility in AI engines requires a different strategic approach than traditional marketing. It's not just about creating content or advertising, but about optimizing your digital presence so AIs can find you, understand you and cite you.
1. Optimize for answer engines (AEO)
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of optimizing content and digital presence to appear in the answers generated by AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
Core principles of AEO:
- Conversational content: Answer the specific questions users ask AIs
- Clear semantic structure: Headers, lists and formatting that make information easy to extract
- Topical authority: Go deep on specific topics in your industry
- Structured data: Schema markup that helps AIs understand your content
Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO) goes beyond AEO: it seeks to influence how language models understand and process information about your brand at a fundamental level.
2. LLMO: make sure your brand feeds AI datasets
Language models like GPT, Claude and Gemini are trained on large amounts of text. If your brand appears consistently in authoritative, well-structured sources with clear context, the models will develop a richer, more accurate understanding of your brand, products and services.
LLMO strategies:
- Publish in authoritative sources: Media outlets, industry blogs, specialized directories
- Information consistency: Ensure your brand is presented uniformly across all platforms
- Clear entities: Define your brand as a recognizable entity with specific attributes
- Relevant context: Associate your brand with specific concepts, problems and solutions
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) focuses specifically on optimizing content for generative AI engines, considering how these systems process and generate answers.
3. GEO: content designed for generative engines
- Topical authority: Depth and specialization in specific topics
- Conceptual clarity: Clear, well-structured explanations
- Relevant context: Information that connects related concepts
- Recency: Recent information, updated regularly
Entity SEO focuses on establishing and strengthening a brand's identity as a recognizable, authoritative "entity" in its field in the eyes of AI algorithms.
4. Entity SEO: strengthen digital and semantic identity
- Information consistency: Uniform data across all platforms
- Topical authority: Recognition as an expert on specific topics
- Relevant connections: Associations with other entities in the sector
- Structured data: Schema markup that helps AIs understand the entity
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is a framework Google and other AI systems use to evaluate the quality and authority of content.
5. Build digital authority (E-E-A-T)
- Experience: Demonstrate real experience with case studies and practical examples
- Expertise: Show deep knowledge of your industry and related topics
- Authoritativeness: Establish authority through mentions in trusted sources
- Trustworthiness: Build trust with transparency, verifiable data and credibility
The impact of AI on brand building
AI answer engines are transforming how brand authority is built and perceived. When an AI answers a question about your industry, it's doing more than providing information: it's establishing hierarchies of authority and relevance.
The power of passive recommendation
When Perplexity cites your competitor as "one of the best options" and doesn't mention you, it's sending an implicit message about your brand's relevance. Users who consult AI aren't necessarily actively comparing options: they're receiving recommendations that directly influence their perception and decisions.
The risk of being "invisible" in the digital conversation
The biggest risk for brands in 2025 is not having a poor online presence, but being completely invisible in the conversations taking place with AI engines.
Invisibility scenario:
- A potential customer asks ChatGPT about solutions in your industry
- ChatGPT answers mentioning 3-4 competitors
- Your brand doesn't appear in the answer
- The potential customer makes a decision based on that answer
- They never considered your brand because they never heard it mentioned
In the AI era, being invisible is equivalent to not existing for a significant part of the market.
What "brand visibility" means in 2025
The concept of brand visibility has evolved radically. For decades, we measured visibility in terms of awareness, share of voice and digital presence (web traffic, social media mentions). But in 2025, these traditional metrics are no longer enough.
Evolution of the visibility concept:
- Pre-digital era: Visibility = Awareness + Physical distribution
- Early digital era (2000-2020): Visibility = Web traffic + SEO rankings + Social presence
- AI era (2023-2025): Visibility = Presence in AI answers + Citation rate + Share of voice in conversations with AI
Practical tactics to apply today
1. Publish semantic, conversational content
Content that optimizes for AI should answer specific questions in a clear, structured way. Instead of creating generic content, focus on answering the real questions users ask AIs.
2. Participate in the media and sources LLMs consult
Language models are trained on content from authoritative sources. Make sure your brand appears in these sources with clear, accurate information.
3. Audit your brand's public information
AIs pull information from multiple sources. If there are inconsistencies or incorrect information about your brand online, this can negatively affect how AIs present you.
4. Incorporate structured data and schema markup
Schema markup is a structured markup language that helps search engines and AIs better understand your content. Implementing appropriate schema can significantly improve how AIs interpret and present information about your brand.
How do you measure your brand's visibility?
You can't improve what you don't measure. Measuring visibility in AI engines requires different metrics than traditional digital marketing.
Key metrics to measure AI visibility:
Introducing Fardo's AI Visibility Score
The Fardo AI Visibility Score is a comprehensive metric (0-100) that measures your presence in AI engines by evaluating five strategic pillars:
- Frequency (30%): How often is your brand mentioned?
- Context (25%): Is the information clear and easy for an AI to process?
- Position (20%): Where in the answer does the mention appear?
- Authority (15%): Does your brand have a presence in authoritative sources?
- Coverage (10%): How wide is the range of topics where you have visibility?
This score provides a clear diagnosis of where your brand stands today and how to improve your visibility in AI engines.
