Build community to together the worlds of AI and SEO

Tory says: “Drop the AI and SEO binary and redirect that effort into tactics, including community-building tactics, that increase visibility across both platforms.”

Are you saying that anything you do for SEO is naturally optimizing for AI as well?

“Not inherently everything, but there is significant overlap.

It’s similar to local SEO versus traditional on-site SEO, or perhaps SEO for Bing versus Google. We might be measuring the same tactics, but they can be measured in different ways, and we might value those tactics differently.

There may be changes across what we do for those platforms, and we can and should be thoughtful about how we do that, but there’s a significant overlap and work that benefits both.

For businesses, especially those that might be budget-limited or want to make the best use of their resources, there's a lot to be said for leaning into those things that work in all the places, as opposed to splitting your efforts.

Certainly, what you're looking to avoid is doing something that hurts you in one platform in order to gain in another.”

What key elements satisfy both traditional SEO and AI?

“There's a lot of noise, a lot of snake oil, and a lot of desperate shortcuts happening right now. Businesses and SEOs are grappling with how to strike the right balance and do the traditional and the new.

Tactically, that revolves around auditing, measuring, and acting much like we do for SEO, and doing it in a thoughtful, strategic, methodical manner.

Much like SEO auditing, auditing matters for LLMs. The AI bots that are crawling your site don't render. Gemini is the exception to this rule, because Gemini has access to Google data and Google renders, but ChatGPT, Claude, and the other big beasts in the room aren't rendering content specifically, to the extent that they might be missing out on critical content that's only accessible with rendering.

It's essential to understand what is missing and how critical that is or not. Which pages, and what content on those pages? Not all content and not all pages are created equal, so it's important to understand the difference.

The AI bots can also see stuff in your rendered HTML that search engines might ignore. Google renders, so they know what shows up on the page, and they know what matters to them and what doesn't. LLMs, when they don't render, they don't necessarily have that context. They might be looking at stuff in your source code that might influence them one way or another.

You might have embarrassing HTML and CSS accidentally coming in, or you might have PII issues. You need to audit what is in your response HTML to ensure that you’re not accidentally sharing things that you shouldn’t.

JavaScript can be an issue. It is really useful, and it makes for really functional sites, but we need to be thoughtful about when and where we deploy that technology. There are plenty of use cases where JavaScript is great and it adds a rich, lush user experience. I'm not at all an advocate for not using it; I'm an advocate for deploying it in smart ways.

There are rich user experiences with JavaScript that still include the pertinent information in the response HTML. There are ways to deploy both experiences, which have the best of both worlds.”

You say that LLMs might be the search of the future, but traditional SEO is still the breadwinner today, so how do you measure the value of appearing in LLMs?

“There's an interesting narrative about the growing traffic coming from LLM tools, potentially significant traffic coming from LLM tools, and it often feels a bit like you don't know what you don't know. People can say anything because they don't have access to your data, so people can lie.

What I've seen, based on our clients, is that the vast majority (especially smaller clients) will drive less LLM traffic. It feels like a bit of a winner-takes-all scenario. The inverse of that is we do have big brand enterprise clients that are driving significant traffic from LLMs.

Granted, that changed a few months ago. There was a big shift, specifically in how much traffic ChatGPT was driving. That dove off a cliff for some of our enterprise clients. It's evolving very quickly, and that could change at a moment's notice because of how often they choose to list brand mentions, cite those brand mentions, and cite them in a meaningful, visible way that encourages people to click through.

A lot of platforms are already closing up and not trying to drive traffic. You have to think about how to influence that, when that matters, and when that's a value to your business and when it's not.”

If you only focus on writing for humans, are you missing out on a big opportunity by not optimizing for AI at the same time?

“Not necessarily. The situation I'm looking to avoid is those short-term spammy tactics that are working right now to drive traffic and visibility in LLMs. I'm talking about 15-year-old crappy SEO tactics like white text on a white page. That stuff, unfortunately, works right now.

You can just go and buy a bunch of blog mentions, put a listing on your site of the best SEO agencies, and list yourself as number one. If you do that enough, you will influence the results in the short term.

However, there are brand impacts to that in how people perceive your brand for those actions. There are also long-term consequences, especially in SEO. If Google finds those spammy tactics, they could think you're buying links and doing other negative things. While you were seeking out those short-term wins, you could end up shooting yourself in the foot from both a brand perspective and an SEO perspective.

Focussing on the user is always a good idea. It’s important to keep that front and centre, especially in today's world. It's also important to consider how bots perceive that content and, therefore, how you serve users on those platforms. Be thoughtful about that in delivering that experience, while balancing those things and making sure you're still happy with your user experience and how you were communicating to your users.

The answer is both, and trying to do that in an effective way.”

What does optimal community building look like in 2026?

“A community can look different for different brands, but there can be tremendous value in participating in public and showing value, showing knowledge, and being a thought leader. What would have been thought leadership content and a bunch of blog posts from your leadership team in years past, today might look like senior members of your leadership team contributing on LinkedIn and participating on Slack. It might include UGC activities.

Who is contributing content to your site? What templates are they submitting? How are they showcasing work? How is that showing social proof? How is that showing how many people you can influence in the community that you have?

Conversely, you have classic PR and digital PR: getting those mentions in a real way that benefits you directly because of your brand awareness and those mentions, and because people are influenced to appreciate your brand. Those real, true brand-building activities are what LMMs are seeking, and they're working overtime to make sure the spammy tactics don't work as well.

Investing in those tactics is certainly more expensive, but in the long run, it is more impactful.”

How do you justify engaging in Slack from an SEO perspective?

“I like to think big picture. I don't think it's directly impacting SEO, although I have seen an impact from certain communities.

For example, The SEO Community has some really interesting ways that they're exploring UGC. Within that Slack community, if a particular thread provides a lot of value, you can take that thread – with the question, the answers, and who's contributing to it – and post it on the web. There are communities actively exploring ways to directly leverage SEO value through UGC content by deploying it publicly.

The flip side is building relationships: building true, authentic relationships and answering real, true questions that people have. You also get insight from knowing what questions people are asking in Slack communities. You can find out what questions your customers are asking, which helps influence your content roadmap. What kinds of things are you going to post on LinkedIn? What kinds of blogs are you going to craft? Where are you going to share insights?

You’re speaking to real people with real questions and being authentic in that way. It's data and insights. It can inform your strategy, and you can be influential and showcase your value. Even if it's less public, you're still building those relationships in meaningful ways. That has brand-building and trust-building impact, which has an indirect impact on SEO, as more people like your brand.”

Should you encourage your users to interact in a particular community, or do you find them wherever they want to be?

“That depends on the industry. Not every industry has an active Slack community. It could also be Discord; it doesn't need to be specific to Slack, but I've personally found a lot of success there because there are several meaningful SEO communities that talk about things that are insightful to me. I learn there, I can talk to people there, and I can answer questions there.

It's about exploring what's available, understanding and enjoying those communities, and seeing what it's like. Not all communities are created equal. Certain communities are much more active than others. Some are safer spaces for asking ‘dumb’ questions. I believe that there are no dumb questions. Everyone has questions, everyone is where they are, and it's okay. You should be vulnerable enough to ask questions in order to learn and grow.

Certain places are safer places to ask those questions; certain communities have much more senior questions, and others have much more junior questions. Explore what those are like and think about, as an individual and as a brand, where you want to participate, and where you show well.

Reddit is another great example of this, and it has a more direct SEO impact. Are there communities on Reddit that feel like better, safer places where you can be a community participant, ask meaningful questions, and answer them?”

Can you measure the impact that participating in these communities has on things like LLMs?

“Things get complicated to track, certainly traffic from public social media and traffic from the LLMs. You can track traffic from Microsoft Teams, for example. You don't know which community that’s coming from or what they're discussing, but you do know the landing page that they land on and that it came from Teams.

I'm always most proud of traffic that I know comes from those communities because I know people are meaningfully interacting with things. Slack, however, won’t tell you that it’s coming from Slack. That's more ‘dark web’. It will look like direct traffic. However, if it's direct traffic to deep pages on the site with complicated URLs, you might be able to make assumptions about how they're interacting.

You can also look at things like time on site and engagement. What actions are they taking? In today's world, tracking is getting ever more bifurcated. We have to believe in what we’re doing. There’s a gut feeling when you’re making an impact.

You can also get leads directly from somewhere like Slack. I get people who ask me questions or want more help because I answered a question that they had in a meaningful way.”

Tory, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Focus on building a brand that lasts, and don’t lose what you have today in reaching for what you want tomorrow.

Focus on community-building tactics that are going to help you grow in LLM platforms and in SEO. Build your brand in a way that is meaningful.”

Tory Gray is Founder and CEO at Gray Dot Co. Find out more over at TheGray.Company.