Search Everywhere Optimization Guide (+ Free Checklist)

6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

The way people search has changed. But most SEO strategies haven’t.

Search doesn’t just happen on Google anymore. It happens across dozens of surfaces — Search, Reddit threads, TikTok feeds, YouTube videos, Amazon listings, Gen AI tools like ChatGPT.

That means ranking #1 in Google isn’t enough.
You need to show up everywhere your customers are discovering, comparing, and deciding.

That’s where Search Everywhere Optimization comes in.

It’s a new framework for shaping visibility across the entire discovery journey. Not just the SERP.

How Discovery Actually Works Now

Imagine you’re looking for after shave oil.

You type a few keywords into Amazon. A brand called Truly Beauty pops up. You’ve never heard of them.

So you go to YouTube to find the “best after shave oil”.

At the top of the results, someone has reviewed Truly Beauty’s product.

Okay, interesting…

Let’s stay on YouTube. Next, you type “truly beauty after shave oil” into the search.

What the? The whole page has people reviewing Truly Beauty products!

Is this brand legitimate, or are all these ads in disguise?

Time to go to Reddit to get some unfiltered opinions.

You search for “after shave oil reviews reddit” and notice that once again, Truly Beauty shows up in the results.

Sure enough, other people share your skepticism. But there’s some positive feedback too.

You decide to give them a try.

This kind of journey happens millions of times every day — across every industry, on every platform.

If you’re in SEO, there’s a clear takeaway here:

You’re not just optimizing for Google anymore.

You need to show up across the entire decision-making journey. Wherever your audience searches, scrolls, or compares.

This is exactly what Truly Beauty figured out.

They didn’t just optimize for Google. They built visibility across the entire search ecosystem. Amazon for discovery. YouTube for social proof. Reddit for authentic reviews.

And it’s working amazingly well.

In this guide, I’ll break down how to optimize your brand for how people actually search today. With concrete examples. Including Truly Beauty’s strategy.

The New Reality: Search Everywhere Optimization

What Truly Beauty did isn’t luck. It’s strategy.

They understood something most brands still miss:

Search has changed.

Today’s customers don’t follow a clean, Google-only path. They bounce from TikTok to YouTube, Reddit to Amazon, back to Google, then maybe ChatGPT for one last check.

The data backs this up.

SparkToro tracked search queries across millions of devices in the US and EU and found that 73% of search intent still revolves around Google.

But the remaining 27% is distributed across 40 other platforms: YouTube, Amazon, Reddit, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Copilot, and more.

That 27% might sound small. But it represents the fastest-growing share of search intent ever tracked. And it’s the share most brands ignore.

Credit where it’s due: Rand Fishkin captured this evolution perfectly in this post.

Search Everywhere Optimization is about helping people find, evaluate, and trust your brand across every platform where discovery happens.

Every one of those platforms can shape a decision. Miss one? You risk losing the customer to someone who showed up where you didn’t.

Some call this omnichannel SEO, cross-platform optimization, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

The way I see it:

Search Everywhere Optimization.

Because the search journey now includes everything from YouTube Shorts to AI summaries.

And your job is to build visibility, credibility, and conversion power across it all.

It’s not just about being found.

It’s about being trusted. On every platform where decisions happen.

That’s what makes Search Everywhere Optimization different — it evolves SEO beyond a siloed tactic into a full-funnel growth strategy.

So, you’re not just optimizing pages anymore.

You’re shaping how people find, evaluate, and trust what you offer across every stage of the journey, on every platform they turn to for answers.

Done right, Search Everywhere Optimization helps you:

That’s the shift:

From rankings to relevance. From clicks to action. From Google-only to everywhere that matters.

Two Core Areas of Search Everywhere Optimization

To make Search Everywhere Optimization work, you need to understand where your audience is discovering products.

And how much control you have over those moments.

That’s where this framework comes in.

We divide the modern search experience into two key areas:

Managed Experiences

These are touchpoints you can directly control.

Your website is still your most important owned asset. But you also manage your social media profiles, product listings, app store pages, and more.

This is where things gets tactical. You’re shaping the journey with:

On your website, you can go even deeper — refining structure, page speed, copy, and trust signals.

The goal? Deliver a fast, credible, and conversion-ready experience every time someone finds you through search.

Earned and Influenced Experiences

Now, let’s talk about where you don’t control the narrative.

These are the moments shaped by others: customers, creators, communities, algorithms.

Earned and influenced experiences are touchpoints you don’t directly control.

But they still shape how people perceive and trust your brand.

This includes:

How your brand shows up in earned spaces matters even more for AI search.

Research by Kevin Indig found that brands are cited in AI answers 6.5x more often through third-party sources than through their own website.

In other words: your website is not your biggest lever for AI visibility. What matters more is your reputation across Reddit threads, review sites, industry publications, and YouTube.

You can’t control these spaces… but you can influence them.

Search Everywhere Optimization is about increasing your visibility, credibility, and perceived value in places you don’t own.

That might mean:

Truly Beauty does this well. Their TikTok is a managed asset. The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.

This isn’t about control. It’s more about visibility, relevance, and credibility in places people already go to decide.

Luckily, you can help shape perception through [helpful content](/content/helpful-content "10 Ways to Create Helpful Content + Examples and Checklist"/index.html), real engagement, and clear value.

You can pay influencers to review and interact with your product, publish high-quality guest posts. So, you don’t have full control over them, but you can light the fire.

For example, Truly Beauty has a strong presence across owned and earned/influenced platforms.

This includes the brand’s official TikTok account, an owned experience.

The brand controls the content, caption, and messaging.

But when someone searches for Truly on TikTok and sees unsponsored reviews? That’s an influenced experience.

Both matter. Because both shape how people perceive your brand.

Search Everywhere Optimization ensures you show up in both worlds (managed and influenced) so you’re part of the journey no matter where it happens.

How Search Everywhere Optimization Builds on Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO has mostly focused on one thing — ranking on search engines like Google.

That still matters.

But it’s no longer enough.

Search Everywhere Optimization expands your SEO strategy beyond Google to include every platform where people search, compare, and decide.

So instead of optimizing just for rankings…

You’re optimizing the entire discovery journey.

This shift doesn’t replace SEO. It levels it up.

If you’ve been wondering how GEO, AEO, and even LLMO compare to SEO, check out our guide: SEO vs GEO.

Traditional
SEO		 Search Everywhere Optimization
Primary Goal Drive qualified traffic from Google and other search engines Help people find, evaluate, and take action across platforms
Tactics Focus on content, keywords, backlinks, and technical fixes Tailor messaging and format to each platform and stage of the journey
Performance Metrics Metrics include rankings, impressions, CTR, and conversions Metrics include engagement, watch time, scroll depth, reviews, and cross-platform performance

Think of it this way:

When you combine both, you create a strategy that moves with your audience.

Across platforms. Across formats. Across every step of their journey.

Step 1: Define Your Search Personas

Creating search personas lets you outline what your ideal audience wants and needs, and what drives their decisions.

This helps you design content and experiences based on real search behavior, rather than assumptions.

Start with Real People

Before you can build your personas, you need real-world insights.

Go straight to the source by asking existing customers questions like:

Tools like Typeform let you create and distribute surveys.

Loop in Sales and Support

No one knows buyer questions better than your frontline team.

Ask them:

This input gives you practical insights you can’t get from keyword tools alone.

Layer in Data

Tools like Semrush’s Traffic & Market Toolkit let you analyze your target market’s demographics.

Here’s how it works:

Enter your domain and up to four competitors’ domains.

View the “ Audience” report to get a breakdown of unique visitors to each domain by age and sex.

Then, scroll to the “Geo Distribution” report to see an overview of visits and unique visitors by country.

Next, click “ Audience Overlap” to learn about your audience’s online habits.

Including their most-visited domains. This gives you insights into their preferences, pain points, and needs.

Once you’ve gathered your data, organize everything into a clean visual persona.

Free tools like Semrush’s persona builder make this easy.

Or just use a doc or spreadsheet — whatever helps you capture the key insights clearly.

By the end, you should know:

These insights give you a clear picture of who your searchers are and what matters to them.

Step 2: Map the Full Search Journey

Map how each search persona moves from discovery to decision across platforms, questions, and content types.

We want to start by breaking the journey into three simple stages.

Expand this journey into more stages and variations as needed.

Like awareness, consideration, evaluation, or post-purchase.

For simplicity, we’ll stick with three core stages.

Then, for each stage, identify:

For example, in the case of Truly Beauty:

A user might first come across this brand when searching for “best after shave oil” on TikTok.

From there, they Google “after shave oil” and see Truly in the top results.

Next, they visit the brand’s site to view product details, images, and pricing.

After that, they head to YouTube.

Finally, they visit Amazon, search for the product, and check reviews again before placing their order.

This is a simplified version of your audience’s actual journey.
In reality, searchers might visit more platforms during the discovery and compare stages — spanning days or even weeks.

This is why it helps to map the complete journey.

Step 3: Identify Gaps and Prioritize Touchpoints

Here’s where you’ll identify what your brand is missing across the search journey and what to fix first.

Using your journey map from Step 2, go through each stage and ask:

For example, in an audit for Truly Beauty, across multiple platforms:

On TikTok and Instagram, they consistently appear for branded searches.
Next, I examined user-generated forums to see if people discuss the brand organically.
Overall, Truly Beauty could have a stronger presence in earned and influenced spaces.

You’ll want to adjust this process based on your specific industry, audience, and platforms.

The key is documenting all touchpoints where your audience searches.

Step 4: Build a Content Plan Aligned with Search Intent

A key part of any strategy is planning content for each search stage and platform.

Use your audit insights from Step 3 to build a content plan that satisfies user needs.

Improve Your Existing Content

Before creating new content, maximize what you already have.

Check Google Analytics or Google Search Console for pages that are underperforming.

Consider this blog post as an example. It already targets relevant keywords, but it ranks on page 4, 5, and beyond.

So, how do you fix that?

Check what they include that you don’t, like additional examples, FAQs, or expert commentary.

Then, improve the content by:

These updates would help align the content with what searchers expect. And give it a better shot at ranking.

Create New Content

Creating new content for every platform should be an ongoing part of your strategy.

For each platform, ask:

Tools like Semrush’s Topic Research Tool helps you find new content ideas.

Step 5: Optimize Owned Touchpoints

When someone lands on your site, they expect it to load fast, feel trustworthy, and make it easy to take the next step.

In fact, search engines like Google look at user experience signals when ranking pages.

Improve Site Performance

Slow-loading pages lead to higher bounce rates, missed conversions, and lower rankings.

Use PageSpeed Insights to analyze your site.

Add Trust Elements

Trust elements give users the confidence to take action, whether that’s making a purchase, booking a demo, or signing up.

Add them anywhere users evaluate options or make decisions.

Clean Up Structure and Layout

Messy layouts confuse users and slow them down.
In contrast, a clean and consistent structure makes your page easier to read, navigate, and act on.

Step 6: Strengthen Your Presence Across Discovery Channels

Some of the most important search moments happen off your website.

In this step, you’ll focus on optimizing how you appear on social media sites, niche forums, and more.

Optimize Your Profiles

Your profile should instantly tell visitors who you are and why they matter to you.

Each one should reflect your brand clearly and feel native to how people use that platform.

Engage with Followers

Getting questions or comments on your social media posts?

This is a great opportunity to engage with your audience and offer helpful information.

Collaborate with Trusted Voices

Want a fast way to build credibility?

Partner with the creators your audience already trusts.

Step 7: Monitor, Measure, and Optimize

You can’t optimize what you don’t track.

To improve your performance over time, you need visibility into how people discover and engage with your content, products, or services.

Start by identifying which metrics you want to prioritize:

Then, choose the right tools to track these metrics.
Use what you learn to improve weak content and fix UX issues.

Ready to Improve Every Search Touchpoint?

The search journey in 2025 isn’t linear anymore. And your strategy shouldn’t be either.

The brands that win won’t be the ones with the most blog posts.
They’ll be the ones who show up with the right content, in the right format, on the right platform — at the moment it matters.

Use our [free checklist](/content/search-everywhere-optimization# "Quick subscribe before opening"/index.html) to turn what you’ve learned into a clear, actionable strategy.