AI & Search Whiteboard Friday Rollup

It’s easy to consciousness for illustration the SEO world is being tipped connected its caput lately. Every week brings a caller activity of caller methods, method jargon, and AI acronyms. I've worked connected Whiteboard Friday videos for a bully fewer years now. And I've seen tactics rhythm successful and retired of favor. But if you look beneath the surface, you'll find that the caller strategies are often the aforesaid halfway fundamentals SEOs person spent years mastering. 

In this roundup, I've pulled together respective caller Whiteboard Friday episodes that research AI hunt tactics, workflows, and a thought portion to time off you with. If you request a speedy catch-up connected each things AI & Search, this is the champion spot to start! 

You can’t presume that ranking good successful accepted hunt automatically gets you a spot successful AI search. In fact, location is hardly immoderate overlap betwixt integrated rankings and AI Mode citations. 

"We only spot a 12% overlap betwixt the apical 10 URLs featured successful the regular integrated and the apical 10 featured URLs cited successful the AI Mode rankings."

For anyone ranking successful the bottommost half of the SERPs, it's not awesome news. AI mode is selecting somewhat higher-ranked URLs from a broader group of queries, alternatively than selecting the afloat apical 10 for a azygous query. This is because of the fan-out functionality, which we'll study much astir further down successful this post. 

Watch the afloat section and download the high-res whiteboard.

To my contented strategy group retired there, the days of the SEO heist are good and genuinely over. But location are still plentifulness of opportunities successful the world of contented if you want to triumph the visibility game. In the words of Chima-the-wise: 

"You request to extremity reasoning for illustration an SEO, and commencement publishing for illustration a journalist." 

We've arrived squarely successful the onshore of marque affinity, a strategy harnessed by leveraging our aged friends: thought leadership, unsocial research, and digital PR. An effective flywheel that marketers person utilized for years. But if you're caller to the game, you request to attraction connected original experiments and investigation that group want to stock and cite. If you‘ve been successful SEO for a while, it’s thing you wouldn’t person already heard. You cognize the aged saying: Stop penning for bots and commencement penning for humans.

In this Whiteboard Friday, Chima Mmeje tells you straight, precisely what you request to debar erstwhile you’re creating contented successful 2026. 

Watch the afloat section and download the high-res whiteboard.

Top-of-the-funnel contented remains an important portion of your integrated hunt strategy, particularly for circumstantial intents and industries. While you mightiness not beryllium capable to measurement results pinch a azygous click aliases a azygous click that converts anymore, high-quality, charismatic contented builds marque trust, earns AI citations, and serves arsenic a strategical plus for acquiring and distributing nexus equity to cardinal merchandise pages. But importantly, successful a world of AI fluff and AI slop, you shouldn't usage AI to constitute your content, but to support your penning crippled plan. 

"Use AI, but not to make the full article. Use it to refine ideas, adhd metaphors, adhd examples, do the research, get the outline, but inject that pinch your original ideas."

In this Whiteboard Friday episode, Andy Chadwick shares his individual model for speeding up contented creation while keeping your original sound beforehand and center.

Watch the afloat section and download the high-res whiteboard.

AI hunt results are an important portion of the purchaser journey, whether it's an AI Overview successful Google hunt aliases a consequence to your punctual astir different ways to repair a dishwasher pump. Google is searching for much than what you typed. It's called query fan-out, and it runs dozens of related searches down the scenes to thief build a complete taxable successful anticipation of your adjacent query. 

Understanding these categories helps you expect your audience's needs much efficaciously and create contented that appeals to them, LLMs, and hunt engines.

Download the complete database and prevention it for early reference. 

Learn much astir really LLM models work.

SEOs and brands tin power their visibility successful AI-generated answers by proactively building citations. You tin reverse-engineer AI responses to place which publications are being cited and past usage proactive outreach to unafraid marque mentions successful those sources

Charlie Marchant explains that, since AI platforms for illustration ChatGPT and Gemini mention circumstantial sources, marketers should research which prompts lead to those citations, past scope retired to those publications to summation marque mentions and contextual relevance. 

"More and much group are really starting their buyer journey successful ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and different AI platforms. ChatGPT unsocial has astir 2.5 cardinal searches each day. And possibly we attraction a small spot astir the demographics of who is really searching successful those platforms."

Download the high-res Whiteboard Friday graphic. 

I'm leaving you pinch 1 past resource, which was personally a delight to beryllium portion of, and I deliberation provides a awesome palate cleanser for each the workflows, strategies, and urgency we spot successful the industry. 

"Britney emphasizes that to usage AI effectively, you person to beryllium consenting to clasp nonaccomplishment because it's the 'yellow ceramic roadworthy of utilizing AI.' The process is inherently experimental and should beryllium treated arsenic such. She advises reasoning for illustration an engineer, which intends breaking down problems into small, manageable chunks and being circumstantial successful your prompts. Avoid the "magic engine" mentality wherever you supply a vague punctual and expect a cleanable result."

The existent worth of AI successful 2025 lies successful information study and task automation alternatively than elemental contented generation. In this Whiteboard Friday Revisited, Britney Muller revisits her 2020 predictions to supply a grounded model for moving past the hype and AI slop by adopting an engineering mindset—breaking down analyzable problems into small, automatable steps while keeping quality expertise astatine the center.

I dream this rollup has near you emotion much informed and excited astir really you tin automate your processes effectively.