Brand Mentions for SEO: How to Get Cited by AI (3 Tiers)

A lot of AEO isn't about what's on your site, it's about getting mentioned on other people's pages, and not just any pages, but the ones AI wants to pull from. In this lesson, you'll learn the three types of pages you should be getting mentioned on and how to find the ones that matter most.

Why brand mentions matter for AI visibility

Branded web mentions had the strongest correlation with visibility in Google's AI Overviews in an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, stronger than backlinks, referring domains, and even Domain Rating.

Not all mentions are created equal, though. Where you get mentioned matters just as much as how often you get mentioned.

Getting mentioned on highly linked pages has a 0.7 correlation with appearing in Google's AI Overviews, even higher than the general branded mentions correlation. The quality of the page you're on makes a huge difference.

To make sense of this, it helps to think about mention sources in three tiers.

Tier 1: Third-party editorial content

These are the hardest mentions to earn, but also the most valuable. Examples include:

• Industry publications

• Review sites like Wirecutter or TechRadar

• Listicles and comparison posts on authoritative blogs

• YouTube reviews from creators in your space

These are so powerful because they're exactly the kind of pages AI loves to cite. 43.8% of ChatGPT citations are listicles and comparison pages, so if you're mentioned on those pages, you're already in the pool of content AI is pulling from.

Find the right pages with Brand Radar

1. Go to Brand Radar and enter your domain.

2. Open the Cited pages: All domains report. This shows the top websites AI is citing for topics related to your brand, including the number of AI responses, the number of pages, and how often each brand is mentioned.

3. Identify which sites matter most for your niche

These are the sites where getting a mention can directly lead to AI visibility.

Find future citation candidates with Content Explorer

You don't have to wait for AI to start citing a page before you try to get on it. Instead, look for pages that already have a lot of links and cover your topic. Even if they're not cited now, there's a good chance they will be at some point.

1. Open Content Explorer

2. Search for your title and add `title:best` or `title:versus` along with a minus operator before your brand name. This surfaces listicles and comparison posts in your niche where your brand isn't mentioned.

   

3. Filter for pages with a good number of referring domains.

   

Tier 2: User-generated content and community platforms

This tier includes Reddit, Quora, niche forums, and community sites, and it matters more than you might think.

Reddit is one of the most frequently cited sources by ChatGPT (at the time of recording this course), and it's also one of the foundational training sources for large language models.

The play here isn't to spam Reddit threads with your brand name, that will backfire fast. Instead, find threads where people are asking questions your product or expertise can genuinely answer.

Find Reddit threads through Brand Radar

1. Open the Cited pages: All Domains report and see if reddit.com shows up for your space

   

2. If it does, go to the Reddit report dig into which specific threads AI is pulling from and join the conversations that are already happening

   

Find niche Reddit pages through Site Explorer

1. Go to Site Explorer and enter reddit.com

2. Open the Organic keywords report

3. Filter for keywords ranking in the top 5

4. Add your niche terms to the include filter

This gives you a list of Reddit pages that are already ranking well in Google and related to your space. You can do the exact same thing for niche forums and Q&A sites.

Tier 3: Your own properties

Some brands own multiple domains. Ahrefs, for example, has Detailed.com and Bloggerjet. If these properties are authoritative in their own right, they can serve as additional citation sources for AI.

Even if you don't have the resources to run multiple sites, the principle still applies. Your YouTube channel, your podcast, and your LinkedIn content are all indexed and can all show up as sources AI pulls from.

Audit your mentions

Earning mentions is one thing, but you also need to keep track of them.

Mentions can disappear, pages get updated, lists get refreshed, and your brand can get removed without you ever knowing.

On the flip side, sometimes AI picks up wrong information about your brand from outdated or inaccurate sources. That's why it's worth doing a regular mention audit.

Go to Brand Radar, and track your overall mention trends over time and look for any drops in mention volume.

If you find a page that previously mentioned you but your brand was removed during an update, investigate it.

Pay attention to sentiment: are AI responses about your brand accurate and positive?

If you spot misinformation, update your own content first, then reach out to the publisher to request a correction. The faster you fix inaccurate mentions, the less time AI has to learn from them.