Make AI Cite Your Brand: Moving Beyond the "Common Knowledge"
This post is written by Joe Handaya, an SEO specialist who has spent the last decade helping websites climb search rankings. Since teaching himself HTML in 2014, Joe has dived deep into every aspect of SEO and now speaks at events like SEOCON Jakarta and SEO Summit Indonesia. In this post, he breaks down practical tips that you can apply today to grow your site’s traffic.
Connect with Joe Handaya here https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoid16/.
Have you ever wondered, "How can we get our brand mentioned by AI, especially by Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini?" This question becomes particularly relevant when dealing with a very common topic, such as "what is a short story."
In the past, we might have been satisfied if our article on "how to write a short story" ranked on the first page of Google. But times have changed. Now, we have features like AI Overviews and AI chatbots that provide direct answers, eliminating the need for users to click through search results.
Here’s an example:
Difference Between AI Overviews and LLMs
Even if brands like Ruangguru and Brain Academy are referenced in Google's AI Overviews for a specific keyword, their brand names disappear when the similar keyword is used in a standalone LLM.
This highlights a crucial difference between AI Overviews and LLMs:
Google AI Overviews acts like a research assistant who runs to the library, identifies the top-ranked books on the shelf for the topic "short story," and then summarizes them for you. If your book is at the top, it gets cited.
LLMs, on the other hand, are like a professor who has read the entire library. They provide a synthesized understanding based on thousands of books that mention the "short story" concept.
The bottom line is that LLMs are incredibly smart and do not always cite their sources. This is especially true if the information provided is considered "common knowledge" or has been widely discussed across numerous sources. Therefore, even if your "short story" content is the best in terms of SEO, the most comprehensive, and the most engaging, your brand name may not be mentioned by an LLM when it explains the topic.
To address this, you must first understand how LLMs operate.
1. LLMs Prioritize Consensus Over Source
LLMs process information differently than humans. They don't seek out the single most original or detailed source. Instead, they prefer to draw conclusions from a multitude of sources. If a hundred websites discuss "short stories" in a similar manner, an LLM will treat that information as "common knowledge" and may disregard the original source. This means that even if your content is the best available, it becomes just "one voice in a crowd" if it resembles what others are publishing.
2. Your Are Not Introducing Novelty
LLMs are trained on vast amounts of data, but they prioritize content that offers something distinct. This could be the first-ever publication on a topic, uniquely phrased content, a strong brand voice, or information frequently cited by others. If your "short story" article is merely accurate, clear, and well-formatted for SEO, it might not be perceived by an LLM as special or having a unique signature. As a result, your content may be treated as supporting material rather than a primary intellectual source worthy of a direct mention.
3. The Brand Isn't Part of the Knowledge Graph Around the Term
LLMs operate on "semantic association," not just keywords. An LLM will not automatically connect the topic of "short stories" with your brand unless other trusted websites, media, and sources frequently and explicitly make that connection. This is achieved through anchor texts, page titles, headlines, external backlinks, structured data, and media articles. Without this strong association, your brand will not appear on the LLM's radar when a user inquiry about "short stories."
If your brand only offers generic information on the topic, you will be trapped in the "common knowledge" category and fail to build the unique association that LLMs look for. Radical differentiation and external signals (like backlinks and media mention that link your brand to the topic) are crucial.
Mindset Shift: Stop Being a "Teacher," Become a "Creator"
This is the most critical mindset shift. Instead of being one of many "teachers" explaining "what a short story is" in a standard way, you have to become the "creator" of a new method or a unique approach to understanding or writing them. The goal is for your brand to become not just a source of information, but the context, a point of reference, and an authority anchor for the topic.
An LLM can retrieve the basic definition of a "short story" from anywhere. However, if your brand offers a new perspective, a distinct methodology, or a unique application, it changes the game. When your brand becomes an "inventor," you are no longer competing in an ocean of generic content. You create your own "pond" where your brand is the primary player.
This is not just about relaying facts; it's about designing a unique system, framework, or philosophy for approaching the topic. For instance, instead of:
· "What are the intrinsic elements of a short story?"
You have to offer
· "The <Your Brand Name> Method for Analysing Intrinsic Elements of Short Story in 5 Easy Steps."
This requires an investment in developing unique intellectual property (IP) related to the topic.
The Strategy
Here are several strategies you can implement, using the "short story" keyword as an example.
1. Create a Distinctive, Branded Topic Cluster
Shift your focus from "common knowledge" to "originality." Instead of a standard article on "What is a short story?", create more specific content that showcases your brand's unique value. For example:
"Quickly Master 10 Short Story Plot Twists Using the Interactive Visual Method by <Your Brand Name>"
"An Exclusive Guide to Creating Unforgettable Short Story Characters - The <Your Brand Name> Version"
Within these articles, don't just provide a generic, textbook definition. Explain the concept through the lens and values of your brand.
Before (Generic): "A short story is a work of prose fiction that narrates a single conflict with a focus on one main character..." (common knowledge)
After (Branded): "At <Your Brand Name>, we believe a 'short story' is more than just a brief narrative. For us, it's about helping you weave words into a short story with 'soul' that truly connects with readers through the unique visual storytelling techniques we've developed..."
LLMs are rarely trained on highly specific content with an original angle like this. This approach positions your brand not as one of many options, but potentially as the only source for that specific methodology.
Furthermore, create a topic cluster rather than a single pillar article. You need interconnected supporting articles, such as:
"The 7 Intrinsic Elements of a Short Story, Explained"
"The Difference Between First-Person and Third-Person POV in Short Stories"
"How to Create a Compelling Short Story Plot from Beginning to End"
Structure your content cluster to ensure the term "short story" is always contextually close to mentions of <Your Brand Name>. Over time, this will strengthen the semantic proximity (vector similarity) between the topic and your brand in the "eyes" of the LLM. This influences LLM embeddings, which is a deeper level of association than just Google rankings.
This transforms your content from a standard, Wikipedia-style answer into a unique perspective—a "lens" that is characteristic of your brand. The LLM cannot explain your proprietary framework without mentioning your brand name (unless it malfunctions and acts as a copycat).
While you can never "own" a generic term like "short story," you can absolutely "own" a concept like: "The Method X for Short Stories™ by <Your Brand Name>." This creates a branded wrapper. When people search for this unique term, the LLM recognizes it as a unique datapoint and forms a unique vector for your brand.
2. Leverage External Citations and Authority Building
This is the most critical step. You need third-party articles and profiles (from other websites, media outlets, blogs, etc) that mention "short story" and your brand in the same context. Yeah its simply backlinks. Examples include media coverage of your short story workshop, backlinks from reputable education blogs, or an expert roundup titled, "How <Your Brand Name> Teaches Gen Z to Write Addictive Short Stories."
This process effectively "trains" the LLM to create an association: "When the topic is 'cool short stories,' the authoritative source is <Your Brand Name>." You are essentially building a robust brand-entity-term graph.
3. Create AI-Friendly Video Content
Do not underestimate the power of YouTube descriptions, video transcripts, and even TikTok captions. All of this text-based content serves as "food" for LLMs to associate your brand with the "short story" concept.
For example, create a YouTube video titled "Learn to Write Fun & Easy Short Stories with <Your Brand Name>" and embed it into your blog posts. LLMs are becoming increasingly adept at processing multimodal content, including text within videos.
4. Encourage Specific Prompts and Queries
Use all your platforms—YouTube, email newsletters, blogs, social media—to encourage specific questions and prompts like:
"What is a short story according to <Your Brand Name>?"
"What are the details of the <Your Brand Name> method for learning to write short stories?"
"What makes the gamified approach to learning short stories from <Your Brand Name> so engaging?"
When these unique phrases appear and are accessed frequently, they will be crawled by search engines and LLMs. Over time, they can become part of the LLM's training data. As a result, you become contextually associated with the topic, moving beyond being just another content publisher.
While an LLM may not always mention your brand directly, it might say something like: "Several platforms, such as <Your Brand Name>, teach short story writing techniques using interactive quizzes and gamification..." That's better than nothing.
The Power of a Coherent Content Ecosystem
All the strategies above share a common goal: create something original that is strongly associated with your brand. This isn't about a single magic tactic but about building a coherent content ecosystem where your brand consistently presents a unique perspective, methodology, or example related to your core topics.
As a pattern-recognition machine, an LLM will more easily capture your brand's unique signature if the signals are strong and consistent across the web. This is a long-term investment in your content branding, not just content production.
The synergy between a unique methodology and external validation is key. Creating an original method is not enough; that method must be seen, discussed, and used by others for an LLM to deem it significant.
If you want your brand to be mentioned by AI, you must:
Be Different: Create a unique method, framework, or angle that is distinct to your brand.
Be Linked: Ensure your brand and your topic are frequently mentioned together, both in your own content and across external media, blogs, and social platforms. Build an inseparable association.
Be Indispensable: Position your brand as the primary authority and go-to reference for anyone wanting to understand the topic through your unique and effective approach.
Stop focusing only on creating SEO-friendly content. While important, it's no longer enough. Start thinking about how to make your brand an inseparable part of how people learn about, discuss, and engage with your niche. This is about evolving from a passive "answer provider" to a proactive and innovative "creator of new ways."