Search Everywhere Optimisation: How to Be Cited by AI and Trusted by People

Search Everywhere Optimisation: How to Be Cited by AI and Trusted by People

To win with Search Everywhere Optimisation, treat your brand as an entity AI can trust and people love. Publish expert, structured content, then distribute it natively on LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok. A wider social presence feeds AI training data, earns citations, boosts freshness signals, and builds human trust all at once.

What you’ll learn from this blog:

• How to make your brand a “citable entity” for AI and humans
• Exactly what to do on LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok to get sourced
• A simple content atomisation workflow that scales without extra headcount
• The machine-readable tweaks (schema, chapters, transcripts) that change everything
• What to measure so you know AI and people are actually finding you

Start here: turn your brand into a citable entity

Think of AI like a journalist in a hurry. It needs credible, consistent sources, clear identities, and receipts. That’s you if you set the table.

• Give your brand an entity home: a robust About page with your mission, credentials, awards, press, and social profiles. Link out with “sameAs” consistency (LinkedIn, YouTube, Crunchbase, GitHub where relevant).
• Show your experts: author pages with headshots, bios, credentials, topics covered, and links to personal LinkedIn/Google Scholar/ORCID if applicable.
• Mark it up: use Organization, WebSite, Article, Person schema via JSON-LD. Add published/modified dates, bylines, and reference sources in your content.
• Publish sources and data: original research, benchmarks, and “how we did it” breakdowns. AI engines love citing first-party data they can point at.
• Make your stance obvious: policies, pricing, product pages, and documentation should be crawlable, canonical, and quick to scan. No anonymous content blobs.

A quick founder story: a sustainability startup consolidated scattered bios into one “Entity Hub” page with schema and consistent links. Within four weeks, their name started appearing in Perplexity citations for their niche queries. Same content, now machine legible.  Not just Perplexity either but in ChatGPT, Gemini and Anthropic Claude

Be loud where AI listens: platform-by-platform moves

A wider social presence isn’t vanity. It’s how AI and people triangulate trust, freshness, and consensus. Post where the conversation naturally lives and natively.  The search is happening in Socials 43% of Gen z and 49% of millennials prefer to search in socials and also according to Hubspot 80% of social media marketers believe consumers will buy products directly in social apps more often than on brands’ websites or third-party websites like Amazon?

LinkedIn: spark professional consensus

• Post ideas as carousels and text posts with strong hooks; add 3–5 niche hashtags.
• Tag real people, not just companies, when citing collaborators or customers.
• Publish a monthly “What we’re learning” newsletter on LinkedIn AI overviews love summarised POVs.
• Link to your source article near the top and again in the comments.

YouTube: leverage transcripts and chapters

• Script for search phrases you’d actually say out loud: “How do I measure AI citations?” “What is entity SEO?”
• Add chapters with keyworded titles, detailed descriptions, and links back to your core guide.
• Always upload SRT subtitles; the transcript becomes your discoverability moat.
• Pin a comment with links to research, slides, and your “Entity Hub” page.

Reddit: contribute before you promote

• Find 2–3 relevant subreddits; read the room. Offer answers with receipts, not pitches.
• Share frameworks, code snippets, templates, and data. Cite your own work sparingly and transparently.
• Host an AMA after contributing for a few weeks. AI engines treat upvoted, detailed threads as high-signal.

TikTok: make searchable short-form

• Say the target keyword in the first 3 seconds and in the on-screen text. Yes, really.
• Use descriptive captions (not just hashtags) that read like an answer: “How to audit your AI visibility in 15 minutes…”
• Post series content (Part 1, Part 2) and link a “resources hub” in bio.

One pillar, ten posts: the atomisation playbook

You don’t need more content. You need smarter distribution. Here’s a simple, repeatable workflow that respects your calendar.

• Start with a pillar: a 1,500–2,500 word guide answering one question deeply.
• Extract 10–15 insights: stats, frameworks, quotes, mini-case studies.

Repurpose:

1. YouTube video (+chapters +SRT)
2.  LinkedIn carousels
3.  LinkedIn text posts
4.  Reddit answer thread
5. TikToks with on-screen steps
6. email roundup linking everything

• Cross-link everything back to the pillar and your Entity Hub.
• Add a downloadable checklist to capture first-party emails without pop-up fatigue.

Imagine this: a fintech CEO records a 12-minute loom explaining their pricing model trade-offs. That becomes a YouTube walkthrough, two carousels, a Reddit explainer, and a TikTok series. Two weeks later, Perplexity cites their video and pillar guide when summarising “transparent SaaS pricing frameworks.

Make it machine-readable (so AIs don’t miss it)

Great content still needs a map. Give it one.

• Schema everywhere: Organization, Product, FAQ, HowTo, Article, Person. Use JSON-LD. Validate with Schema.org and Search Console.
• Structured navigation: topic clusters with clear hubs and spokes, canonical URLs, and breadcrumb schema.
• Transcripts and captions: YouTube, TikTok, podcasts human-friendly and AI-friendly.
• Open Graph and Twitter Cards: crisp titles, descriptions, and featured images so your content unfurls beautifully across socials and messengers.
• Sitemaps and RSS: make it easy for aggregators and AI tools to ingest updates.
• Link hygiene: internal links that map expertise, external links that cite reputable sources, and UTMs to trace performance.

Prove it’s working: metrics that matter

Vanity metrics are loud. Evidence is quiet but convincing.

• AI citation sampling: run your priority queries monthly in Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews; record which assets get cited.
• Platform-sourced conversions: add UTMs to every social post; track in your analytics tool and CRM.
• Branded + entity search: monitor Search Console for rising branded queries and “brand + topic” combinations.
• Contribution depth: track completion rates on YouTube chapters, saves/shares on LinkedIn, and dwell time on pillar pages.
• Authority growth: watch for earned links, journalist quotes, and community shout-outs. They’re the breadcrumbs AI follows.

Your 7-day SEWO sprint

• Day 1: Build/refresh your Entity Hub (About, team, credentials) with Organization/Person schema and consistent “sameAs” links.
• Day 2: Publish a single pillar guide that answers one high-intent question end-to-end.
• Day 3: Record a 10–12 minute video walkthrough; upload with SRT, chapters, and links back to the pillar.
• Day 4: Create two LinkedIn carousels and one text post; schedule across the week.
• Day 5: Answer three relevant Reddit threads with genuine depth; cite your pillar if (and only if) it directly helps.
• Day 6: Cut two TikToks with on-screen steps; add searchable captions.
• Day 7: Wire up UTMs, update sitemap, submit to Search Console, and log baseline AI citations.

Conclusion and next step

Search Everywhere Optimisation isn’t about gaming algorithms it’s about showing up consistently where people and AI look for proof. Start with your entity, ship one excellent pillar, and repurpose it natively across LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok.  This youtube video and what to do in a sea of AI content to be authentic might be useful or this blog on why you might want to outsource your socials for higher ROI.   If you want a partner to build this engine with you, Tenacious Sales (operating globally as Tenacious AI Marketing Global) is here to help. Contact Us and let’s make your expertise easy to find and impossible to ignore.

Faq’s

What is Search Everywhere Optimisation (SEWO)?
Search Everywhere Optimisation is the practice of making your brand visible and “citable” across all discovery channels not just Google, but also AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and social platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok.

2. Why is a wider social presence important for AI visibility?
AI engines are trained on multi-channel data. They pull from Reddit threads, YouTube transcripts, LinkedIn posts, and Google-indexed content. If your brand only shows up on Google, you risk being invisible in AI-generated answers.

3. How does social media activity influence search results?
Active social channels provide freshness signals, community validation, and extra citations that AI engines use to cross-check credibility. Platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube are increasingly surfaced in both Google AI Overviews and LLM answers.

4. What’s the difference between AEO, GEO, and traditional SEO?

• SEO = optimise for Google search results.
   
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) = optimise so AI engines cite your content directly in answers.
   
• GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) = structure content so generative AI systems pull your data into summaries and overviews.

Together, they form the foundation of Search Everywhere Optimisation.

5. How can I make my brand a “citable entity”?

• Build an About/Entity page with schema and consistent “sameAs” links to socials.
   
• Create author pages with bios and credentials.
   
• Publish original research, benchmarks, and structured how-to guides.
   
• Be active on platforms where AI looks for consensus (LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube).

6. What role does schema play in Search Everywhere Optimisation?
Schema markup makes your brand machine-readable. Using Organization, Person, FAQ, and Article schema helps AI engines understand your content, attribute expertise correctly, and reference you in answers.

7. How often should I update my Google Business Profile and social channels?
At least weekly. AI engines and Google prioritise brands that show consistency and freshness, new posts, reviews, Q&A updates, and social engagement all strengthen visibility.

8. Can AI replace social proof from humans?
No. AI references signals created by humans, reviews, comments, shares, and posts. Without active social proof, your brand looks inactive and is less likely to be cited by AI or trusted by people.

9. How do I measure success with Search Everywhere Optimisation?

• Check monthly which assets appear in AI Overviews and Perplexity answers.
   
• Monitor branded + topical search queries in Google Search Console.
   
• Track engagement on LinkedIn posts, YouTube chapters, and Reddit threads.
   
• Look for an increase in earned links and mentions from other sites.

10. What’s the first step to start with SEWO?
Build or refresh your Entity Hub (About page, team bios, schema, links). From there, publish one strong pillar guide and repurpose it across LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok. That’s the fastest way to start showing up everywhere.