Our Six Takeaways From SEMrush's Spotlight Bootcamp
Senior Account Manager Olivia Sutton and Marketing Account Manager Henry McNab recently attended SEMrush’s Spotlight bootcamp, which centred on how AI is affecting organic search.
AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews are changing how people discover brands, and for ecommerce brands that raises a practical question: how do you make sure your products and expertise are surfaced? As a leading authority on SEO and AI discovery, Semrush’s bootcamp laid out what’s changing, what’s staying the same, and how ecommerce brands and agencies can measure it.
Here is what mattered most for ecommerce, and how we are applying it as an ecommerce marketing agency working with Shopify brands every day.
#1 - SEO Isn't Dead - It's Evolving
Don't abandon SEO fundamentals to chase AI visibility. Build on them.
In the evolving era of artificial intelligence, you may have heard people say, ‘SEO is dead’; Well, we can put that idea to rest - that isn’t the case. AI SEO should be treated as an expansion of the traditional search experience, rather than replacing it. SEMrush stated that 8-12% of pages that rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs), also show up in AI answers. So, strong SEO foundations remain important for visibility in AI-powered search. That said, AI search should be considered an additional discovery channel, with different behaviours and measurement needs. AI answers are also part of the wider rise in searches that never reach a website, which we cover in our guide to zero-click searches for ecommerce brands.
#2 - Understanding How AI Describes Your Brand Is Essential
To win in the AI era, you need to understand how AI interprets your brand before you can improve how it represents you. You can do this by auditing your brand’s sentiment using SEMrush’s AI visibility tools.
This is the major difference between AI SEO and traditional SEO, AI takes into account the sentiment for a brand outside of that brand’s own website and uses multiple sources to reach a conclusion. Sentiment is simply the tone AI uses when it talks about a business. positive, neutral, or negative. A simple place to start is to ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews the questions your customers would ask, then note what each says about your brand, your products, and your competitors.
You need to check if AI is representing your brand accurately. For example, is AI surfacing your core selling points accurately? Is it showcasing them at all? It can be a long game to get these updated, but with AI citations becoming more frequent, this is a game worth playing.
Frequently Asked Question: Do I Need To Rewrite Content for AI ?
Due to the different responses given by AI and the different means by which it reads a site, many website owners wonder if they need to rewrite their content in order for an AI tool to discover it. Put simply, you only need to rewrite your on-page website content if it’s incorrect.
Content should be clear, helpful, and easy to understand. So, Yes - restructuring certain passages may improve readability, but conversational rewriting is not a requirement for appearing in an AI search. The key lesson is to optimise your content for people first, while making the meaning of your content clear.
So you can optimise core passages based on your prompt research where it makes commercial sense to do so, but you don’t need to rework your entire site. But if you have particular insights or USPs that your competitors don’t, you should make the most of these, as AI will use them as a point of differentiation.
#3 - Prompt Tracking Is Essential: How Do You Find Out What Potential Customers Are Asking In AI?
- A prompt is simply the question or request someone types into an AI tool, so prompt tracking is the AI-era equivalent of keyword research.
One of the core takeaways was the importance of prompt tracking - the AI era’s equivalent of keyword research - which can itself be set up through large language models (LLMs).
Like with keyword research, it’s key to prioritise prompts that will move the needle for your revenue, not top-of-funnel awareness prompts in the first instance. You can also track prompts where competitors appear, but your brand doesn't, to find out where you may be missing out on high-intent traffic.
The key to unlocking the commercial potential of AI for your brand is to identify the questions customers are asking at different stages of the buying journey, while distinguishing between brand mentions and more valuable source citations.
#4 - Content Needs to Be Easy for AI Systems to Find and Understand
If AI systems can’t retrieve passages from your site, you’ve already lost, especially if it can do this for your competitor’s sites.
You need to make sure that there aren’t any technical barriers in the way of AI retrieving information from your site - this is sometimes different for different large language models, like ChatGPT or Gemini. It’s worth keeping in mind that different platforms, like Shopify or Magento, will also have different setup methods. As a Shopify Agency and Shopify development agency, we are well equipped to deal with the latest changes to get your brand surfacing in AI.
Common checks include whether your robots.txt file blocks AI crawlers, whether key content is available in plain HTML rather than loaded only through JavaScript, and whether structured data (schema markup) is in place.
Best practice tip: You should use the abbreviation BLUF to structure your content. This stands for ‘bottom line up front.’ What this means is you need to put the important information at the top of articles, as AI has been seen to favour passages in the top third of a page.
#5 - AI Visibility Depends on More Than Just Your Website
On-site optimisation still matters for both SEO, GEO and AEO, but your wider digital reputation also shapes how discoverable and credible your brand appears.
The core difference between traditional optimisations for search and optimisation for AI, is how AI gets its information. As we mentioned before, while traditional SEO and AI search both draw on information from across the web, AI-generated answers can gather information from multiple sources to describe, compare, and recommend brands.
For your AI visibility to improve for the prompts relevant to your brand, you need to first understand where you’re being mentioned.
Let’s take a coffee brand, for example: are you being mentioned in subreddits for coffee subscriptions, or are creators talking about your coffee shop in UGC? Mentions across third-party channels are discoverable by AI search systems and can contribute to how your brand is represented in AI-generated answers. Our work with Hard Lines Coffee shows how much a coffee brand’s online presence reaches beyond its own website.
Best practice tip: It is often helpful to strengthen relationships with reputable publications, ensure you’re replying to reviews and contribute to online content within the spaces your potential customers are.
Frequently Asked Question: What is the Difference Between AI SEO, GEO and AEO?
A few terms are being thrown around here, and without formal definitions, it can be difficult to know the difference between them all, let’s look at each in depth.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) focuses on getting your brand mentioned or cited in AI responses. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is more focused on getting your content selected as the direct answer to a user's question. The key difference is that GEO prioritises brand visibility and recommendations, while AEO prioritises providing clear, authoritative answers to specific questions.
AI SEO (Artificial Intelligence Search Engine Optimisation) is the broader umbrella term covering both GEO and AEO. Its goal is to improve your brand's visibility across all search experiences. In simple terms, GEO gets your brand mentioned, AEO gets your questions answered, and AI SEO brings everything together. For ecommerce brands, we treat all three as parts of a single ecommerce SEO strategy, rather than separate projects.
#6 - AI SEO Needs New KPIs and Ongoing Measurement
Rankings and organic traffic alone won't tell the whole story of brand visibility in AI search.
In traditional search journeys, you may look at improving your keyword volume or the number of clicks in positions 1-3. But for AI, new KPIs are needed. From AI visibility, AI share of voice, citations, and mentions - measuring success is the only way to see if your efforts are making up the ground you hope they are.
Here are the metrics we will be monitoring for our clients:
- Mentions and citations in AI, particularly for commercially relevant prompts
- Share of voice compared to brand competitors
- Sentiment and the accuracy of brand representation
- Visibility across different LLMs - e.g. ChatGPT vs Google Gemini
- Joining the dots on referral traffic and revenue from AI.
Like with any marketing campaign, set your baseline now, before you make any changes: record where your brand is currently mentioned and cited for your priority prompts, then re-check on a regular schedule so you can see what moves.
Final Thoughts: Turning AI SEO Insights into Action
The SEMrush Spotlight Conference reinforced the idea that improving visibility in AI search isn’t about abandoning established SEO practices or chasing mentions for the sake of it. It’s about building on strong SEO foundations, understanding how AI platforms represent your brand, and identifying where your business has the greatest opportunity to be discovered and cited.
For ecommerce brands, the next steps are clear: audit your AI visibility, research the prompts that your customers are searching, and improve the ways AI can access your content and build authority across the wider web.
AI search is an evolving channel, so ongoing measurement and experimentation will be essential. The brands that take a structured approach now will be better placed to understand how their visibility changes and where to focus their efforts next.
Want us to help with your SEO? Contact our ecommerce agency team to find out more
