AI SEO 2025: How B2B Brands Win Visibility in Google's AI Mode & LLMs

Meet Sarah, a B2B operations director at a midsized manufacturing firm. She’s been tasked with finding new compliance management software to prepare for an upcoming audit. Her journey begins in Google’s AI Mode, where she switches into the new AI Mode tab. Instead of typing a single keyword, she starts a conversation: “What’s the best way to manage GDPR data mapping in a midsized company?” 

AI Mode responds with a structured overview, citing a handful of trusted sources. Sarah clicks one of the AI citations, then asks a follow up: “How does this compare with CCPA requirements?” The AI expands the answer, again drawing on selected sources. Within minutes, Sarah has a shortlist of vendors she trusts — not because she scrolled through pages of results, but because their content appeared directly in her AI assisted search optimisation journey. 

This is the reality of AI SEO in 2025. The old playbook of simply “ranking high” isn’t enough. Brands now need to be cited, quoted, and trusted within AI Overviews if they want visibility with decisionmakers. For B2B SEO marketers, this shift is both a challenge and an opportunity. 

A New Kind of Visibility 

AI search optimisation compresses choice. Where once there were ten organic results, now there may be just six AI citations. Those citations carry huge weight: they’re effectively endorsements that say, this brand knows what it’s talking about. If your company isn’t listed there, you’re competing for the scraps of attention further down the page. 

But if you are cited? You gain a disproportionate advantage. Buyers see your name framed by Google’s AI Mode as a trusted authority. That recognition builds confidence before they’ve even visited your site. For long, complex B2B SEO journeys, this is gold dust. 

Measuring What Matters 

Traditional rankings still have a role, but they don’t tell the full story anymore. In AI SEO, the crucial questions are: Are we being cited? How often? For which queries? Set up a simple tracking log, or use emerging tools, to monitor your AI citation rate. Over time, you’ll spot which content structures or data types consistently win you mentions, and you can double down on them. 

It’s also worth tracking how those citations influence behaviour. Do prospects who land on your site from an AI Overview spend more time engaging? Do they convert faster? These are the new indicators of EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in action and the new markers of SEO success. 

Tracking brand visibility across commercially critical prompts in LLMs is now key to a brands future success and ability to compete. Here is an example: 

This helps us to understand brand performance across these prompts vs competitors, here are some example prompts tracked: 

We are then able to review what of our content, our authority brand mentions off site, or the competitions content are being used in the cited answers where the brand is being mentioned: 

This helps to inform content strategy and planning for future content production.  

What Makes AI Choose You? 

Google doesn’t reveal its recipe, but the patterns are clear. Brands that win AI citations are those that show real expertise, present information in a way that’s easy to lift into an answer and make life simple for machines trying to parse their pages. 

Think of it this way: AI is looking for content that feels like a reference guide written by a practitioner. It wants clarity, authority, and proof. Pages with named experts, genuine first-party data, clear definitions, and simple structured data are far more likely to be chosen than generic thought pieces. 

For example, a SaaS provider we work with began publishing short “how to” explanations at the top of their longform guides. Within months, those crisp summaries began appearing in AI Overviews — because they gave the AI exactly what it needed: a precise, copy ready answer. 

The Pitfalls To Avoid 

The temptation in the AI era is to churn out more content faster, often with heavy AI assistance. But Google’s spam updates make it clear: that route is dangerous. Mass produced, low value articles or irrelevant third-party posts won’t just fail to get you cited — they could harm your entire domain. 

Sustainable AI SEO is not about speed, it’s about substance. Every page needs to prove its worth: who wrote it, why it’s trustworthy, and what new value it adds to the conversation. Without EEAT, your chances of citation are slim. 

How B2B Brands Can Adapt 

Winning visibility in AI Overviews requires a mindset shift. It’s no longer just about covering keywords; it’s about anticipating questions buyers genuinely need answered. Start by mapping the conversations your prospects are having: What definitions do they struggle with? What comparisons do they Google mid meeting? What processes do they need explained? 

Then, answer those questions in ways that are concise, structured, and evidence rich. Use schema markup to help Google interpret your answers. Add diagrams and flowcharts where a picture explains better than a paragraph. Publish even small slices of first-party data — a survey of your customer base, an anonymised benchmark, or a pricing snapshot — because AI loves citing fresh, credible stats. 

The brands that thrive will be those who bake this discipline into their content operations. Not one-off tweaks, but a habit of writing, designing, and publishing with AI search optimisation in mind. 

A Practical Example 

Take a company selling compliance management platforms. Their buyers are Googling queries like “GDPR audit process” or “GDPR vs CCPA differences”. Instead of publishing long, undifferentiated blogs, the winning approach is to: 

• Place a clear 100 word summary at the top of each page. 
• Add a FAQ section addressing the top five compliance concerns. 
• Include a flowchart mapping out the audit workflow. 
• Publish anonymised benchmarks from real fist-party data. 
• Mark it all up with schema markup so Google can easily parse and cite. 

That page isn’t just content. It’s an AI ready resource — credible, quotable, and designed for citation. When a buyer sees it in an AI Overview, the brand earns trust immediately. 

Final Thoughts 

AI SEO is a reset moment. The rules have changed, but the principle is the same: the brands that provide the clearest, most trustworthy answers will win. In 2025, though, those answers need to be designed not just for people, but for AI systems deciding what to surface. 

If you start treating your content as the raw material for AI search optimisation, you’ll give your brand the best chance of being cited, trusted, and chosen.  

Shape your future with a free SEO Audit today. 

Your expertise deserves to be recognised. Let’s make sure Google’s AI Mode does exactly that.