You already know your customers are using ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews to research buying decisions. The strategic question is: how do you ensure your brand is the one being recommended?

In this episode, I walk through the five-step framework we use at Exposure Ninja to get clients recommended by AI tools — the same approach that's driven measurable traffic and sales for brands like The Ordinary.

You'll learn how to audit your current AI visibility using tools that aggregate data across multiple platforms, rather than manually testing prompts.

We'll cover the SEO foundations that matter (and why they're necessary but insufficient on their own). And I'll show you the "query fan-out" approach that gets your content cited multiple times within a single AI response.

The most interesting finding from our work: AI tools don't necessarily recommend the biggest brands.

They recommend the brands most clearly associated with specific concepts that match the user's query. This creates an opportunity for businesses with sharp positioning to outperform larger, less focused competitors.

We helped The Ordinary dominate "good value skincare" recommendations across multiple AI platforms by ensuring every mention of their brand — across their own content, third-party publications, and user-generated reviews — reinforced the same core concepts: good value and scientifically backed.

The framework covers five areas: visibility auditing, SEO foundations, content optimisation for AI consumption, strategic ubiquity across trusted sources, and preparing for paid visibility in AI results (which is already beginning with Google's AI Overviews).

Each step includes specific tactics you can implement, tools we use with clients, and real examples of what works in practice.

If you're building your 2026 marketing strategy, this is the AI Search Optimisation roadmap you need.

Listen to these episodes next:

How To Create and Optimise Your Content for AI Search

https://exposureninja.com/podcast/363/

Copy The 3 Pillars of £50m+ SEO Campaigns

https://exposureninja.com/podcast/371/

The BEST SEO Strategies for 2026

https://exposureninja.com/podcast/368/

The brands dominating search today aren't just focusing on links and keywords. They're mastering three strategic pillars that deliver sustained visibility across traditional search and AI-powered platforms.After ten years working with national and international enterprise brands (including a recent Global Search Award win for The Ordinary), we've identified the exact framework that separates market leaders from everyone else.In this episode, I reveal:• Why technical SEO performance matters more than ever — including how page load speed impacts both rankings and conversion rates (with data from Cloudflare and Walmart showing the direct business impact)• The onsite content strategy that works for both AI search and traditional SEO — including how we helped ZUGU become the top-recommended iPad case in ChatGPT and Google's AI Mode through content hierarchy and internal linking• Why offsite SEO is now about brand building, not just link building — and how digital PR on high-authority sites influences AI recommendations (with examples from our work with Aged Care Bathrooms)• How tools like WP Rocket can handle 80% of technical SEO automatically — even if you're not technicalI'll share specific examples demonstrating how Core Web Vitals, topic clusters, and digital PR work together to drive rankings across both traditional search and AI platforms.If you're ready to build an SEO strategy that works for both traditional search and AI-powered platforms, this episode provides your complete action plan.

The paid search strategies that worked in 2024 are already obsolete. In 2026, your 2025 strategy will no longer work either.

Tight keyword segmentation and manual bid management are actively harming performance, whilst AI-driven approaches and first-party data have become the critical differentiators between campaigns that flatline and those that scale.

Rebecca Pilkington, our Head of Paid Media, reveals the award-winning strategies that took Aged Care Bathrooms to a £2.4 million run rate in nine months and generated 11,000 leads for DSLD Mortgage in year one — campaigns that earned Exposure Ninja three Global Search Awards in 2025.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why first-party data is now your most valuable asset
• When AI features work brilliantly (and when they tank campaigns)
• How to test AI without destroying core performance
• Why over-segmentation is killing your reach
• The multi-channel approach that actually drives results in 2026

If you're planning your paid search strategy for 2026, this episode provides your complete roadmap backed by real campaign data.

Get the show notes:

https://exposureninja.com/podcast/paid-search-strategy-2026/