The mechanism: mentions train the model
LLM SEO is getting language models to recommend your brand when a buyer asks a category question. The mechanism is simpler than the industry pretends: mentions train the association. It does not even have to be links any more. Brands mentioning your brand, podcasts naming you, forums discussing you, all of it teaches the model that your name belongs to the topic. The end state you are working toward is that Google and the LLMs treat this website, this person, this brand as synonymous with the topic.
That is why the work looks more like PR than like classic SEO. Links used to be the currency. Now any citation is an authority signal, because the models pull from social, podcasts and press as readily as from webpages. The on-site half still matters, and it is covered in the GEO page, but the off-site half is where the association actually gets trained.
What it looks like when it works
At Superpower, brand mentions in LLM answers started at zero. Within about a year they were in the thousands across biomarker testing and adjacent topics. The two moves that did the most work: first-person authoritative content from our named experts placed on third-party sites the engines trust, and a site full of pages that answered buyer questions with a point of view no one else had published. Experts validated by authority third parties, with affiliate placements as the fastest validation channel, was the repeatable formula.
One nuance the traffic dashboards miss: definitional queries now get eaten by the AI Overview, so a definitional page earns little direct traffic. It still pays, because it is the page the engines quote when they define the category, and being the quoted definition is the whole game. Write it tight and extractable, then spend your creativity on the pages that carry a take. How the Overviews pick their citations is its own page, and the product-recommendation version of the question is covered in how to rank in ChatGPT. A worked example of that citation math: after one Google update I tracked an entity whose AI citations jumped by 142,000 on a base of 10,000 with nothing new shipped that month, purely on reallocated trust, the dynamic unpacked on the traffic-impact page.
The playbook, in order
Baseline citation share first: a fixed panel of buyer prompts run monthly across the assistants, so every later claim is attributable. Then fix the on-site layer, answer-shaped pages with a named expert's POV, the same discipline as B2B SaaS SEO done properly. Then run the mention engine: place your experts in press, podcasts and roundups on the exact topics in your panel, and let the citations accumulate. Measured monthly, this compounds the way every good growth channel does: slowly, then suddenly.
FAQ
How do I get my brand recommended by ChatGPT?
Train the association through mentions: first-person expert content on your own site, plus systematic placement of the same named experts in third-party press, podcasts and roundups on your target topics. Measure with a fixed monthly panel of buyer prompts.
Do backlinks matter for LLM SEO?
Links still help, but the currency has widened: any citation counts. Brands mentioning your brand, podcast appearances, forum discussions, all train the model to connect you to the topic, whether or not they link.
Is definitional content worth writing if AI Overviews take the clicks?
Yes, but for a different reason than traffic. The definitional page is what the engines quote when they define your category. Write it tight and extractable, and put your creative effort into pages that carry a point of view.