How to Get Traffic from AI: Complete 8-Step Guide

Understanding the AI traffic landscape

The way people find information or answers to their questions has changed significantly since the advent of AI-powered tools.

Instead of just typing keywords into Google, users now prefer to engage their favorite AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini, to ask full questions and receive detailed, direct answers.

These tools typically fall into two categories: 1) AI chatbots and 2) AI search engines.

1. AI chatbots like Chat GPT, Claude, and Gemini generate conversational answers to users’ questions (or prompts) based on large language models (LLMs).

2. AI search engines like Perplexity, Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), and Bing combine AI-generated responses with web results, sources, and/or citations.

So, while their formats are different, they both essentially function as ‘answer engines’ that try to satisfy user queries without users having to dig through multiple pages or links.

Many chatbots can now also act like search engines if you turn on the ‘search’ functionality when asking questions.

What does this mean for businesses and their overall digital marketing strategy? For starters, it presents a new opportunity to drive traffic and even enhance their credibility if they are mentioned in these AI responses.

Therefore, visibility and relevance are crucial for driving traffic from AI. It also means that the rules of games have changed a little as AI-powered platforms prioritize quick, clear, and accurate answers.

This new area of optimization is being dubbed ‘answer engine optimization, aka AEO but that’s not to say it works without the time-tested, beloved SEO. Let’s dive deeper into it!

Step 1. Master Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Simply put, AEO is the practice of optimizing your content creation so that AI tools can find it, understand it, and use it to answer questions users ask them.

So, it’s not just about SEO anymore; it’s also about maintaining a presence in the answers provided by these AI tools in your content strategy.

All the strategies we will discuss in this post will eventually lead to a better AEO. So, if you want your website’s content to be referenced when someone asks “What’s the best pet insurance for senior pets?” or types a how-to do something, your content needs to be structured to answer it clearly.

A good AEO strategy requires you to:

• Anticipate specific questions: Research what your target audience would ask, whether these are FAQs or something more niche. In fact, the more niche the answers, the greater the chance your content will appear in AI results.
  
• Be concise yet comprehensive: Keep it short and sweet, i.e., answer it in a few lines, then if the users want to read more about the topic, they can click through. This pattern matches how AI tools typically present information.
  
• Use a structured format: Organize content with clear headings, lists, bullet points, and FAQs that are easy for AI crawlers to interpret.
  
• Provide evidence and citations: Back your answers with any real examples, case studies, statistics, and reputable sources to establish credibility.
  
• Ensure technical accessibility: Make sure your content is crawlable and fast-loading.

Optimizing AI-powered tools’ ability to understand and use your content as an authoritative response will help you tap into high-intent traffic that wants clarity and real value – not fluff.

Now that we understand what AEO is all about, let’s look into some strategies that can help you leverage AI tools to get the most out of them.

Step 2. Earn mentions on high authority websites

AIs use mentions on other websites as one of the factors to include your content in their answers. This might remind you of SEO, as will most of the strategies. This makes backlinks and mentions on reputable websites crucial for inclusion in AI answers.

Getting mentioned on reputable websites that are relevant to your business and target audience puts you in front of them as someone who can offer value to users.

The goal is to secure positive mentions that appear natural and organic for the most part, thanks to your content optimization efforts, and if you get backlinks from authority websites, it will also help your SEO efforts.

Best practices to implement this approach

• Identify authority sites in your niche: Use tools like Ahrefs to find sites with high domain authority that rank for your target keywords. For instance, if you sell automation SaaS, then you might want to do keyword research to target relevant keywords, see what ranks, and then reach out to those sites.
• Create linkable assets: Develop comprehensive guides, original research, or exclusive data that other sites will want to reference. Interact with posts or blogs on those topics, where possible, get featured in ‘Top 10 roundups, How-to guides’ type posts, and even sponsored ones. 
• Collaborative content and guest posting with expertise: Contribute high-quality guest posts to relevant publications, showcasing your expertise and linking back to your detailed resources. Connect with well-known experts to collaborate on high-quality guest posts, and organize or attend webinars and podcasts.
• Digital PR techniques: Create newsworthy content or studies that journalists and bloggers will want to cover and reference. Look into promoting with other relevant industries or businesses, e.g., legal case management software or e-commerce businesses wanting to automate their processes.

Step 3. Make it easy for AI crawlers to find your content

It’s difficult for AI-driven tools to use your content in their responses if it’s harder for them to find or understand it.

Just like the crawlers in good ol’ SEO, AI-driven crawlers also rely on crawling the web and going through a ton of content.

This means your content has to be easily discoverable and accessible for these tools. Here are a few ways you can include this into your existing SEO strategy:

• Keep pages public and crawlable – Don’t block important web pages with content in your robots.txt file. Also, avoid placing valuable content behind logins or creating a bad user experience. Use clean HTML instead of putting content behind JavaScript.

• Consider implementing an llms.txt file – while not an officially announced standard yet, many marketing teams are currently testing this approach to provide specific guidance to AI crawlers.
  
• Use structured data – Aka Schema for blogs, FAQs, or reviews to make it easier for crawlers to understand your content.
  
• Provide concise answers – AI tools like concise, to-the-point answers. Having content with clear headings, summaries, bullet points, and/or key takeaways helps AIs extract or make sense of the content more easily.
  
• Link internally with context – You can provide more context vs using a generic ‘click here’ anchor text, as it can help AI crawlers (even your visitors) understand what they are going to discover.
  
• Don’t forget meta tags – Certain AI-driven platforms extract summaries of your content from meta tags, so having clear and relevant meta descriptions and titles can help. In fact, alt text for images can give LLMs info about visual content.

Common issues you may encounter

Issue	Impact on AI Crawlers	Solution
JavaScript-rendered content	May be missed by some crawlers	Implement server-side rendering or dynamic rendering
Excessive redirects	Slows crawling and indexing	Minimize redirect chains to one hop
Duplicate content	Confuses crawlers about the authoritative source	Use canonical tags to indicate primary content
Slow page speed	Reduces crawl efficiency	Optimize images, use CDNs, and implement caching

But as you might have experienced yourself, many people also use artificial intelligence for conversational search. Let’s explore this next.

Step 4. Focus on long-tail conversational search terms

A 2020 study found that around 92% of searches include long-tail keywords. If this was the case five years ago, there’s a good chance the number has only increased – especially in the past couple of years.

So, instead of just typing in “automation tool,” which would be helpful for your keyword research, they might ask:

• How can I automate emails?
• How can I automate customer service?
• What tool is best for automating invoice management? 

Another SEO technique that will be useful for AEO now is directly asking AI to provide your conversational topics or queries that users can ask about your content, and target those.

Now, for these types of questions, it’s a good idea to provide content that aligns with how AI algorithms would typically respond.

Another good place to look for these conversational topics is by scrolling down a little on Google search results and looking under the ‘People also ask’ section.

People also ask for examples in SERPs. It’s even cooler when you click on one of these questions; more will show up, giving you many more ideas for your content marketing strategy.

Best practices to implement this approach

• Identify conversational queries: Use tools like:
  • AnswerThePublic
  • Google’s “People Also Ask” sections
  • AI tools themselves (ask ChatGPT for likely questions in your niche)
  • Your customer service team’s frequently answered questions
• Create content that mirrors AI response patterns:
  • Start with a direct, concise answer
  • Follow with supporting details and evidence
  • Include comparative information where relevant
  • End with actionable takeaways
• Optimize for query variations:
  • Include both question forms (“How do I…?”) and implied questions (“Best ways to…”)
  • Address different knowledge levels (beginner, intermediate, expert)
  • Consider regional variations in terminology

Step 5. Leverage Google’s E-E-A-T framework

The E-E-A-T framework, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is primarily used in SEO to get you featured on the first page of search results. 

While the E-E-A-T framework was originally designed for Google’s search results, its principles are increasingly valuable for AI optimization as well. 

Though there isn’t always a direct correlation between Google rankings and appearances in AI responses. 

At the same time, if you create content with strong Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals, the chances of establishing your content as a reliable source for both traditional search and AI tools are pretty solid.

E-E-A-T best practices

• Experience: Demonstrate first-hand experience with your subject matter:
  • Include personal observations and insights
  • Document processes you’ve personally completed
  • Share before/after scenarios with measurable results
  • Use first-person language where appropriate (“We tested 15 models before reaching this conclusion”)
• Expertise: Establish clear subject matter expertise:
  • Feature content from qualified authors with relevant credentials
  • Create detailed author profiles highlighting qualifications
  • Include professional certifications and education
  • Reference your experience in the industry (years, roles, achievements)
• Authoritativeness: Build site and brand authority:
  • Get mentioned or cited by recognized authorities in your field
  • Secure guest posting opportunities on authoritative sites
  • Participate in industry events and webinars
  • Contribute to research or studies in your field
  • Create comprehensive resource hubs on specific topics
• Trustworthiness: Build trust signals throughout your content:
  • Include clear datelines and update timestamps
  • Provide transparent methodology sections in research content
  • Disclose affiliate relationships or sponsorships
  • Implement secure browsing (HTTPS)
  • Display trust badges and certifications
  • Include easily accessible privacy policies and terms

Take, for example, an automation tool; let’s say you do a piece on ‘Top 10 Automation Tools’. Now, instead of talking about each tool briefly, some pros and cons, and the price, you could go deeper and add the following things:

• Experience elements:
  • Screenshots of your dashboard using the tool
  • Time-lapse demonstration of the implementation process
  • Before/after metrics from your usage
  • Talk about what some best use-cases are and in what cases it might not be necessary to use the specific tool or the automation
• Expertise elements:
  • Author bio highlighting automation certifications
  • Industry context showing knowledge of the automation landscape
  • Use any stats with their sources, making your content data-driven
• Authority elements:
  • Quotes from tool developers or industry experts
  • Comparisons with industry benchmark data
  • Show positive and negative reviews or what the industry experts say
  • References to your previous work in automation
• Trust elements:
  • Disclosure of testing parameters and limitations
  • Balanced coverage of pros and cons
  • Clear explanation of rating criteria
  • Transparent update policy
  • Cite any case studies

This makes your content very high quality, and you add trustworthiness and authoritativeness by backing up your claims with stats, sources, and industry experts.

Step 6. Tailor content strategy to each AI platform

While most AI tools aim to answer users’ questions, their response styles vary, and this can help give direction to your content marketing strategy.

For instance, each one of them has a different format to their responses for the same query e.g. “automation for testing.”

ChatGPT 

Response pattern: Provides comprehensive, structured answers with clear sections. Here is what ChatGPT’s response style looks like:

Perplexity 

Response pattern: Emphasizes cited sources and offers related queries. Perplexity also suggests search terms or queries as you type.

It also includes a ‘Related’ section with similar queries to give you an idea.

Google’s Gemini/SGE

• Response pattern: Combines AI summaries with traditional search results.

Grok

Lastly, let’s look at Grok’s response to the same query.

• Response pattern: More conversational, sometimes includes opinions and references

So, what can you do? You might want to see what types of queries trigger which style of response, how your content can cover all those angles, and what types of content you can use in your content marketing.

Step 7. Don’t forget AI overviews

Using AI to learn from AI overviews shows you how important it is to have structured content.

For instance, if we look at the AI overview for ‘how to automate testing,’ we get a very clear, structured overview of the steps we can take.

Although AI-generated content in overviews seems a little counterintuitive if you want to increase click-through rates to your content, they can still help you to get traffic if you’re cited as one of the sources.

Now, let’s say you’ve finally started to receive AI traffic. The next step would be to find out where you’re getting website traffic from.

Bonus step 8: How to track traffic from AI search

While most AI tools don’t provide referrer tags or custom UTM parameters, there’s still a way to track and analyze this traffic reliably with the help of Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

GA4 serves as your primary data source, capturing sessions, sources, and user behavior across your site. However, identifying AI traffic in that data isn’t always straightforward – that’s where a dedicated dashboard comes in. 

Inspired by methods like those we blogged about in How to Track and Analyze Website Traffic from AI Sources, our AI traffic performance dashboard helps surface and segment AI-driven visits using GA4 data.

The dashboard also lets you filter your key events if you have multiple ones from the top and covers 11 metrics from Google Analytics:

• Total users
• New users
• Sessions
• Avg. session duration in seconds
• Bounce rate
• Key events total aka conversion events
• Purchase revenue
• Event count – specific to any event that you choose from the drop-down list above
• Key event – specific to any key event that you choose from the drop-down list above (marked as Key event in Google Analytics)
• Users with key event
• User key event rate

The cool thing is that you can use different dimensions to measure your site’s AI performance against these metrics. For example, with the tabs below, you can choose to see performance by AI source, aka referral, and AI traffic to landing page.

The dashboard also includes a list of AI sources and a helpful ‘Readme’ tab to help you get started and make the most of it. Just to clarify, the dashboard is simply a tool to analyze your AI traffic in one place. It is available as a template for Google Sheets and Looker Studio but gets its data automatically from GA4 using the Coupler.io connector. Choose the version you like the most and try it right away for free.

AI traffic performance dashboard in Google Sheets

Analyze the performance of website traffic from AI tools like ChatGPT, Meta.ai, Gemini, and others in this comprehensive dashboard.

Try this dashboard

AI traffic performance dashboard in Looker Studio

Visualize and analyze visitor behavior from AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini with actionable insights on engagement, conversions, and content performance. This dashboard helps you understand the emerging AI referral channel and its impact on your business goals.

Try this dashboard

This should help you keep track of your performance and optimize website traffic for the tools that are bringing in the most traffic and/or conversions, as these would be the easiest ones to optimize for, and then you can work your way through other AI tools that are generating website traffic.

Check out also other ready-to-use reporting solutions by Coupler.io including a SEO dashboard.

Increase visibility via AI-generated traffic

As AI tools continue to evolve and shape how users discover and consume information, it’s becoming increasingly clear how important using AI is for businesses if they want to grow.

But AI-generated answers, regardless of the tool, aren’t just about gaining more visibility; they also demonstrate that your business can be trusted in that space as it uses your content, and that’s a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

The strategies we covered all work together to improve your chances of appearing in AI responses. So, a balanced approach where every strategy is given some consideration will be the most effective for content optimization.

And this isn’t just some theoretical content, as using the AI performance dashboard, you can measure if these strategies are working or not in generating traffic or conversions.

In the end, AI isn’t going to replace your traditional SEO strategy, but it is definitely going to extend it and use it to show your content.

So, this is the time to position your content for an AI-first web, and while you’re at it, don’t forget to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ for when artificial intelligence takes over the world, even if it costs the AI companies today!