If you want the unfiltered truth, none of this is a new idea.
And a lot of us, myself included have been saying it for years. But it just took a choir of marketing experts echoing the same thing for businesses and brands to finally start listening. And this is your sign to start listening too.
Back then, the message was simple: show up everywhere your audience is. That was the foundation of smart omni-channel marketing.
It wasn’t about chasing every shiny platform. It was about being visible across multiple touch-points, building brand familiarity, and creating enough presence that people recognized your name before they ever needed your product.
Then Google changed the rules.
When Zero-Click Became the New Normal
As Google shifted to more zero-click results, marketers started to feel the squeeze. Traffic dried up. Featured snippets and AI summaries started answering questions that used to drive clicks. That’s when we started saying it louder: you can’t rely on your website alone.
If you want your audience to see you, you need to be where they’re looking. That means Reddit threads, Quora discussions, YouTube videos, niche forums, and social feeds. Anywhere real conversations are happening you want to make sure you have a seat at the table.
Enter the LLM Era
Now we’re in a new stage. Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are scraping the internet for the same signals of trust and relevance that SEO has always cared about. They aren’t searching your website for answers. They’re reading everything that mentions your brand, your products, or your expertise.
That means visibility isn’t just about backlinks anymore. It’s about training data. LLM optimization isn’t “new SEO.” It’s SEO finally growing up.
What This Means for Your Strategy
If your strategy stops at your domain, you’re behind. If it’s your domain plus one channel, you’re still behind and still getting lapped by your competition.
Visibility today means showing up across every credible space online and offline. It’s about shaping your brand’s presence wherever information is gathered, shared, or summarized. The brands winning in this new landscape aren’t the ones chasing clicks. They’re the ones building trust signals that scale across the web through thought leadership, community engagement, and consistent presence.
TL;DR
- Search visibility, social visibility, and training data visibility are no longer separate efforts. They’re part of the same ecosystem.
- The more your brand appears across trusted spaces, the more AI and people see you as a reliable source worth showing to others.
- That’s not a new rule. It’s just the old one finally getting the spotlight it deserves.
