Travel influencers / content creators, how are you optimizing for LLM visibility?
We’ve been experimenting with making user accounts and travel reviews highly structured, and switching from guest posts to Featured Traveler interviews to generate stronger author mentions.
But I’m curious what creators are doing to increase their chances of being recommended in AI chats. Or are most people still focused mainly on traditional SEO?
From my own conversations in this part of the industry, the "check your AI ranking" tools that are popping up everywhere are wildly inaccurate, if not total bullshit. So I would caution anyone making decisions from these tools, as fun as they might be.
I think the most important thing is to care about your readers and audience and be obsessed with serving them with the best user experience and information to make decisions. Remember, if you're not a source of truth, or the supplier of the product/service, then you are only an INTERMEDIARY in the distribution chain and you're at the mercy of LLMs.
I'd always say "yes" to structured data, fast page speed, and unique content (unique as in truly unique, not lazily changing the words around) as this will always improve UX and information exchange.
What I'd add to this in the age of LLMs is that since there's essentially zero cost to creating unique content (e.g. AI slop) — the value is now in TRUTHFUL and TIMELY content. e.g. you saw that with your own eyes, yesterday. Perhaps this is the end of longtail content, we shall see.
Publisher, editor, writer, blogger, Al Centro Media
Nothing. If you do SEO right, you should be covered with LLMs as well, especially if you get mentioned a lot outside of your own site(s). Second, we content creators get so little traffic from LLMs that optimizing for them has very little upside and a huge downside: they can just scrape our content easier to spit out simple answers. I want real readers looking for more detailed information.
I don't know if I agree with all of that. I think you're right about brand mentions, but that's different from traditional seo backlink strategies.
I don't think search is going away anytime soon, but it's changing fast. You can't rely on searches on Google when most search results fall under AI overviews and sponsored links. If you're not showing up in the AI overviews, I don't know how you can compete. How many people are going to keep scrolling after they've found their answer.
On top of that, I'm hearing more that you won't show up in AI results if the LLMs can't verify you as an entity. And I really believe that's going to make its way to traditional search.
Plus, I heard a few people mention, Neill Patel was one of them, recently say talk about the conversions from AI results. I think most are saying 1 out of 100 people visit sites in AI results compared to 1 out of 1000 for search results.
To me, it seems like you're not going to be able to rely on random strangers just stumbling onto your content by accident for traffic for much longer. I think the strategy, now should be to build an audience that check out your content whether the AI has the answer or not.
I don't think folks should throw their whole seo strategy in the trash and start from scratch. But I do think that there are adjustments that need to be made to anyone looking to be around for the long-term.
Publisher, editor, writer, blogger, Al Centro Media
The fact that you mentioned conversions shows you're looking through an e-commerce lens, not a content site lens. Both my search traffic and my overall traffic across 4 travel websites is higher than it was before AI came along. The LLMs are sending fewer visitors than Pinterest or Facebook does. I saw a recent study that across the whole internet, the traffic from AI tools that all sites are receiving is averaging less than half of one percent. I'm not structuring blog posts different just to capture those clicks. Those visits are from impatient people I don't really want on the site anyway: they're not quality traffic, just quick in-and-out hits. They're not going to stick around and they're not going to join the newsletter list.
Travel influencers and content creators, how are you optimizing for LLM visibility?
Travel influencers and content creators, how are you optimizing for LLM visibility?
was posted by Tony Jefferson
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Featured on Mar 18, 2026 (1 month ago).
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Travel influencers / content creators, how are you optimizing for LLM visibility?
We’ve been experimenting with making user accounts and travel reviews highly structured, and switching from guest posts to Featured Traveler interviews to generate stronger author mentions.
But I’m curious what creators are doing to increase their chances of being recommended in AI chats. Or are most people still focused mainly on traditional SEO?
Good question.
From my own conversations in this part of the industry, the "check your AI ranking" tools that are popping up everywhere are wildly inaccurate, if not total bullshit. So I would caution anyone making decisions from these tools, as fun as they might be.
I think the most important thing is to care about your readers and audience and be obsessed with serving them with the best user experience and information to make decisions. Remember, if you're not a source of truth, or the supplier of the product/service, then you are only an INTERMEDIARY in the distribution chain and you're at the mercy of LLMs.
I'd always say "yes" to structured data, fast page speed, and unique content (unique as in truly unique, not lazily changing the words around) as this will always improve UX and information exchange.
What I'd add to this in the age of LLMs is that since there's essentially zero cost to creating unique content (e.g. AI slop) — the value is now in TRUTHFUL and TIMELY content. e.g. you saw that with your own eyes, yesterday. Perhaps this is the end of longtail content, we shall see.
Hope that helps some people!
Nothing. If you do SEO right, you should be covered with LLMs as well, especially if you get mentioned a lot outside of your own site(s). Second, we content creators get so little traffic from LLMs that optimizing for them has very little upside and a huge downside: they can just scrape our content easier to spit out simple answers. I want real readers looking for more detailed information.
I don't know if I agree with all of that. I think you're right about brand mentions, but that's different from traditional seo backlink strategies.
I don't think search is going away anytime soon, but it's changing fast. You can't rely on searches on Google when most search results fall under AI overviews and sponsored links. If you're not showing up in the AI overviews, I don't know how you can compete. How many people are going to keep scrolling after they've found their answer.
On top of that, I'm hearing more that you won't show up in AI results if the LLMs can't verify you as an entity. And I really believe that's going to make its way to traditional search.
Plus, I heard a few people mention, Neill Patel was one of them, recently say talk about the conversions from AI results. I think most are saying 1 out of 100 people visit sites in AI results compared to 1 out of 1000 for search results.
To me, it seems like you're not going to be able to rely on random strangers just stumbling onto your content by accident for traffic for much longer. I think the strategy, now should be to build an audience that check out your content whether the AI has the answer or not.
I don't think folks should throw their whole seo strategy in the trash and start from scratch. But I do think that there are adjustments that need to be made to anyone looking to be around for the long-term.
The fact that you mentioned conversions shows you're looking through an e-commerce lens, not a content site lens. Both my search traffic and my overall traffic across 4 travel websites is higher than it was before AI came along. The LLMs are sending fewer visitors than Pinterest or Facebook does. I saw a recent study that across the whole internet, the traffic from AI tools that all sites are receiving is averaging less than half of one percent. I'm not structuring blog posts different just to capture those clicks. Those visits are from impatient people I don't really want on the site anyway: they're not quality traffic, just quick in-and-out hits. They're not going to stick around and they're not going to join the newsletter list.
When I say conversions, I'm talking about converting impressions into people who actually click through to your site, not e-commerce.
But that would be crazy sales, if you could hit those numbers.