Citation Optimization Strategy

Get mentioned across multiple sources to become the LLM's top recommendation

Ethan Smith
The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product

Citation Optimization Strategy

"The LLM is summarizing many citations, and so you need to get mentioned as many times as possible. Usually when you ask something like 'What's the best tool for X?' The first answer will be mentioned the most in the citations." - Ethan Smith

What It Is

Citation Optimization is the offsite component of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). Unlike traditional SEO where ranking #1 wins, LLMs summarize multiple sources—the product mentioned most frequently across citations typically becomes the top recommendation.

This creates a fundamentally different competitive dynamic: early-stage companies without domain authority can win immediately by getting mentioned in Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and blogs that LLMs cite.

How It Works

LLMs use RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to answer questions. They search for relevant content, identify citations, and summarize them. Different sources carry different weight and appear with different frequency depending on the query type.

Citation Source Categories:

Source Type Examples Controllability Cost
Your Site Landing pages, blog High Low
Video YouTube, Vimeo High Medium
UGC Reddit, Quora Medium Low
Tier-1 Affiliates Dotdash Meredith, Forbes High (if you pay) High
Tier-2 Affiliates TechRadar, niche blogs Medium Medium
Earned Media News, reviews Low Variable

Key Insight: Citation overlap between platforms varies. ChatGPT and Google Search have only ~35% citation overlap. Perplexity has ~70% overlap with Google. Each platform needs separate tracking.

How to Apply It

Video Strategy (YouTube/Vimeo)

  • High controllability—no community moderation
  • Underutilized for B2B ("There's not that many videos about AI-powered payment processing APIs")
  • Create videos for high-LTV keywords with little video competition
  • Vimeo also gets indexed, not just YouTube

Reddit Strategy

  • Most cited UGC source
  • Spam doesn't work: Fake accounts, auto-posting, and self-liking get banned
  • What works: Real accounts, real names, state where you work, give genuinely useful answers
  • Target threads that appear in citations for your target questions
  • You don't need 10,000 comments—even 5 quality comments can drive results

Affiliate Strategy

  • Most controllable but expensive
  • Dotdash Meredith (Good Housekeeping, Allrecipes, Investopedia) is heavily cited
  • Forbes Advisor, TechRadar appear frequently for B2B
  • Pay to be included in "best of" lists

Earned Coverage

  • Less controllable but valuable
  • Blogs, reviews, news mentions
  • Compounds with brand building

Different Citation Profiles by Category

B2B SaaS:

  • TechRadar, G2, Capterra prominent
  • Help centers get cited for specific feature questions
  • YouTube underutilized opportunity

Commerce:

  • Dotdash Meredith brands (Glamour, Good Housekeeping)
  • Rich snippets and schema matter
  • Shopping carousels are clickable

Local/Marketplaces:

  • Yelp, TripAdvisor, Eater
  • Maps integration important
  • Local review sites

When to Use It

  • When you want to show up in LLM answers quickly (works faster than SEO)
  • When you're an early-stage company without domain authority
  • When competitors haven't optimized their citation presence
  • When your target questions have limited video coverage

Early-stage recommendation: Focus on citation optimization and long-tail questions. Skip traditional SEO until Series A/B.

Source

  • Guest: Ethan Smith
  • Episode: "The ultimate guide to AEO: How to get ChatGPT to recommend your product"
  • Key Discussion: (00:11:00 - 00:18:00) - Citation strategy and Reddit optimization
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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