Content creation has become a lot easier these days, what with all the new technologies and tools. And yet, it’s also become trickier, with more considerations to keep in mind.
This is especially true in the public relations field, in particular as regards press releases and related content types. Not only must PR people produce articles that are publish-ready for print and navigate media relations challenges to secure a wide coverage and meet targets. Their content must also be usable for online websites and social media pages as publications have online sites and business clients their own.
Writing then needs to take into account not just print but also online requirements, and SEO and print considerations are not always aligned. Add GEO to the equation and the stakes run higher.
Besides looking to optimizing content by having it usable across various channels and platforms given finite resources, businesses and PR firms now must consider GEO alongside SEO. Standing out on the internet has ceased to be only about SEO. As AI increasingly reshapes online search and information access, content has to be for both humans and machine.
Building the GEO foundation without sacrificing SEO
How does this affect one’s approach to writing in general, and press releases in particular? While we continue what we have been doing from our years of practicing SEO as tackled in our recent article on SEO and GEO, we need to do more.
A good starting point is to understand how AI assistants or search engines work. AI search tools break down an article for easy evaluation as regards relevance and authority or credibility against a user query. This is called parsing. AI tools check multiple material and integrate all useful information into what the user will then see as a summary.
Knowing what information the target audience would usually seek or need and how they phrase queries would likewise be useful. Notice how many online article titles now come in question format?
Value to the user or reader remains at the center of SEO- and GEO-friendly content. Add clarity, flow and readability and both SEO and GEO goals are achieved.
User intent, which is important in SEO-powered content, plays an even bigger role in increasing the chances for being recognized by generative AI as it responds to a user query.
AI-powered search engines go beyond the actual keywords users type when they do a search. These tools check for intent, which may be informational, transactional, navigational and commercial. (User intent as it influences content strategy may be another article. Watch out for it.) AI assistants even break the query to look into sub-intents in order to come up with a response that actually meets the search’s real intent or goal. All these form the background for those AI summaries we increasingly come upon whenever we do an online search.
How to align content value with SEO and GEO
This does sound complicated, but there are ways to create intent-aligned content and boost AI selection and citation. Here are some tips:
- Offer more original, high-quality content that matches the interests of your target audience. Publish own study or research, if available. Content such as these build expertise and authority.
- Provide reliable data. Cite sources. LLMs are drawn to updated and accurate facts as these reflect credibility.
- Front-load important data. Remember the inverted pyramid of your early (news) writing training? Answer the Ws and H in the opening paragraphs. This helps AI assistants extract essential data right away.
- For press releases, insert brand mentions early on in the article.
- Use measurable and current data, statistics and similar information types to substantiate claims.
- Start with clear, concise and strong titles. Make sure the body copy ties in with what the title promises. This conveys clarity of ideas and delivers on the promise that the title gives the reader.
- Ensure logical and natural flow in the article.
- Go for natural language. Not just for better readability. AI’s natural language processing capabilities recognize human conversational tone.
- Avoid merely stuffing the material with keywords. Spread them strategically within the article instead, making sure to keep the context. Synonyms and related terms provide an alternative and assist in connecting ideas.
- Go for depth, not just breadth.
- Do not be vague, but instead be specific and provide examples, if possible, something LLMs will notice. In new product press releases, for example, saying “the product packs 80MP built-in cameras” is clearer and more informative for the reader compared to “the product yields quality images.”
Remember EEAT? It is important in creating SEO-powered content. It is also relevant for the content to be easily understood and cited by AI search engines.
- Experience.
- Expertise.
- Authoritativeness
- Trustworthiness
EEAT circles back to quality content: It has to be useful, credible and reliable.
Whose product review would you trust more — one made by someone that has actually used said product or another from someone who has not? Same goes with articles written by someone with experience in the topic or field versus articles from someone without direct experience and merely using secondhand information.
How to structure for AI readability
Structure content with readability and online user attention span in mind. So AI assistants can parse the material easily, use shorter paragraphs and sentences.
- Break long texts and try for shorter paragraphs for easier scanning and parsing by AI tools. The one idea-one paragraph still applies.
- Enhance the flow with proper headings and subheadings. Structure-wise, these serve as sign posts that help the readers in digesting information. With GEO, these sign posts help with AI parsing.
- Bullets, lists and tables further help make an article easily scannable. Do not overuse these though.
- Explore adding several bulleted information to serve as summary right up front. This can replace the usual standfirst format and in press releases will go before the dateline.
- Be mindful of punctuation marks. Too many symbols may confuse AI assistants, not to mention interrupt the flow of reading. Unwise or incorrect use of em dashes and commas, for example, can interfere not just with grammar but also with reader comprehension rather than help with readability and flow.
Press releases are a strong tool that businesses and organizations can leverage if the goal is increased visibility to generative AI and citation in AI responses. Press releases have direct quotes with clear attribution that LLMs and AI assistants can easily use in assembling responses. Many have bulleted information, and the dateline and boilerplate add to the trustworthiness factor.
This could mean that press releases targeted at print publications may need to be repackaged for online. Even if print publications do have their online counterparts and they mirror print content online, the typical format for print content is still different. Newspaper articles rarely have bulleted summary before the dateline and body copy, for one. Because of the space considerations, lists and tables are not so common either.
The alternative is to write with intent, making sure all the salient details are present. Then make minor tweaks to suit print and online — SEO and GEO included — considerations. If the same press release is going to one’s own website or blog, this repackaging would also have to be consistent with the site look and feel for consistency.
One last reminder: Intentional content creation in the AI era is not just about using AI, generative AI in particular, to create and optimize material. It also means delivering content that AI tools will recognize, access, parse and include in search results for greater and easier access by a larger audience.
