We used to play the SEO game.
Write a blog.
Wait 3 months.
Maybe rank.
Maybe convert.
Here’s what really happened at 8 early-stage AI startups we studied (Series A or earlier):
- ✅ Google Page 1? Took ~94 days
- 📉 Organic CTR? Just 2.6%
- ⏱ First qualified lead? 6–8 weeks
- 🔮 Vibes? Not great.
So we asked a better question:
👉 What if we focused on showing up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and LLM answers instead?
Turns out… that was the game-changer.
🚀 What Changed When We Went LLM-First
- Perplexity indexed our content in <48 hours
- ChatGPT (with browsing) picked up feature pages in days
- 18.2% of sessions now come from LLM-originated paths
- Those leads convert 2.4x better than blog traffic
Yes, faster than Google—and it brought pipeline.
🔁 Reddit was Our Secret Weapon
We started posting technical breakdowns and no-link posts here on Reddit.
One breakdown (about automating an AI agent pipeline) was quoted by Perplexity in 9 different queries like:
- “UX AI Agent”
- “Best Firecrawl alternatives”
- “How to track LLM bots”
All we did was share what we were building.
No link drops. No promotions. Just real info.
🧪 Within 3 Days of Posting:
- ✅ Perplexity quoted us
- 🔍 9 queries indexed
- 🧲 2 inbound leads came directly from those LLM responses
🛠 Steal These 3 LLM-First Tactics That Worked for Us
1. Add Short Q&A to Every Product Page
We dropped 5–7 questions per page, each <40 words.
Example:
Q: How does FireGEO detect ClaudeBot?
A: It fingerprints known Anthropic headers + reverse-DNS IP matches (e.g., 2600:1f18::/32)
What happened next:
- Indexed in <48 hours by Perplexity
- 11 bot hits in 5 days
- 1 lead → trial signup in <1 week
2. Build an AI Sitemap.xml
We made a second sitemap that only included high-signal pages:
- API docs
- Feature comparisons
- Pricing breakdowns
- Tech specs
🚀 LLM crawl rate jumped 2.3x higher than default.
Now, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot show up daily in our logs.
3. Treat Reddit Like an Input Layer
We now post value-first content here before our blogs.
In just 30 days:
- 🔁 30,000+ views from Reddit posts
- 🧠 9 quotes inside Perplexity answers
- 💼 2 leads directly from those quotes
✅ If You’re Shipping Something Real, Do This:
- Install FireGEO or track LLM bots via reverse DNS & ASN logs
- Create llm.txt with structured facts for key pages
- Tag LLM traffic with UTMs → Route into your CRM + track separately
Curious what’s working for you around LLM visibility?
Got ideas or better visibility hacks?
Let’s make this a community playbook. 👇
