# AI Citation Strategy Implementation ## Executive Summary 1. **AI assistants aren't going anywhere:** They answer **4+ billion** daily prompts and growing. 2. **AI Overview hurts revenue unless you're cited:** organic CTR ("click through rate") declines **34%** when headed by AIO (that means decreased revenue for many businesses). 3. **AI-referred traffic converts better:** AI-referred visitors are more qualified, stay longer, and convert **4.4×** more. 4. **Relevance beats ranking.** **47%** of AI-cited pages rank **21+** in search. 5. **Authority compounds:** Today's owned and earned content becomes tomorrow's training data. **Delay = permanent disadvantage.** 6. **Risk mitigation:** While AI assistants evolve, core web content (3rd party news and blogs) retain **70%+** of citations and become training data. 7. **Next step:** Technical website audit for AI bots + rapid-response content team (owned and earned). 8. **Result:** Competitors focused on optimizing for Google or traditional SEO alone won't catch up. --- ## Step-by-Step Implementation ### Phase 1: Technical Foundation 1. **Enable AI Discovery** - Remove robots.txt blocks for AI crawlers + implement server-side rendering - Deploy schema.org JSON-LD markup with metadata (bylines, dates, credentials) - Structure content as self-sufficient paragraphs that work as standalone answers ### Phase 2: Strategic Planning 2. **Map Strategy to the business and audiences** - **B2B:** Technical docs on owned domains (17% citation rate) - **B2C:** Third-party validation (<4% direct citations) - **Mixed:** News/blog coverage (70% citations) ### Phase 3: Content Engine (Ongoing) 3. **Deploy Rapid Publishing System** - **Be fast:** Industry commentary within 48 hours (65% of citations < 1 year old) - **Maintain content:** Quarterly updates + "definitive answer" pieces - **Multi-channel distribution:** owned, earned, paid 4. **Create Comprehensive Coverage** - **Full journey mapping:** Discovery ("what is") → Evaluation (comparisons) → Decision (pricing/implementation) - **Provide value:** Synthesize scattered info + resolve industry contradictions with proprietary data - **Success metric:** % sub-query rank per topic ### Phase 4: Measurement (Ongoing) 5. **Track What Matters** - **Leading Indicator:** % sub-query rank per topic, % content < 90 days old - **Lagging indicator:** Your citations vs. competitors (Share of Answer), AI-referred traffic and conversion rates Read my full report: [[The No Nonsense Guide to Getting Cited by AI v9]]