WORKWEEK

I’m still thinking a ton about information architecture, specifically because of how much search is changing. LLMs serve up answers very different from search engines. It’s not just what you content says that matters. It’s how it’s organized. 

Let’s take a look. 

OK, some data to ground us:

• Gartner predicts search engine volume will drop 25% by 2025 due to AI chatbots and other virtual agents. I think it will be even more. 
• In Forrester’s Buyer’s Journey Survey (2024), 89% of buyers reported they were using genAI in at least one area of their purchasing. That has to be 100% these days. 

So, people are using it. A lot. How does it work? I’ve found this article to be incredibly helpful. Be warned: it gets technical. Rightfully so. It is technical, and a huge shift. And this article compares the models side-by-side to really make it clear what has changed and why how you organize your content has to change, too.

Now, if you are already publishing content across your website, and not just on a blog or resources page, and there is a clear hierarchy––well, your information architecture may be just fine. Heck, if you are already using a composable CMS (like Sanity, for instance) which helps organize content contextually and in components, as data basically, then you are already in a good place. 

That’s because, as the article makes clear (and that’s your reading this week, not this newsletter), you need to:

• Engineer content at the passage level for both semantic similarity and to be LLM-preferred. 
• Optimize for semantic similarity and triple clarity.

A composable CMS helps you do both of those things. 

Now, that’s not all you and your SEO counterpart need to do––but it’s a start. Reading the article is a great start. Getting a real, deep understanding of what is happening, and how to make sure your content gets seen (because it’s worthless if it doesn’t) and then converts is critical to your role. 

Leveraging AI to build campaign strategies, outline or draft content, etc. That’s scratching the surface. And it’s too in the weeds anyway. You need to zoom out. How content is surfaced to people is changing, rapidly. Hell, it already has. How you present it to the LLMs matters––just as it did to search engines. Understand how the LLMs think and cite, and you can ensure your company shows up. 

Get a baseline for how you show up in the LLMs with Hubspot’s free tool.