A few days ago, I “sneak-peeked” a deck from the Shenzhen SEO Conference, presented by overseas ecommerce growth expert Kevin Jeppesen. Honestly, after reading it I felt both excited and a little anxious.

Excited because I can see a brand-new battleground for SEO’s future; anxious because if we stay stuck in traditional keyword thinking, we might genuinely get left behind by the times.

Here’s a set of jaw-dropping stats: AI-referred visitors convert at 23x the rate of traditional search, engagement hits 72.5% (vs. 60.4% for traditional search), and ChatGPT alone accounts for 82% of AI traffic sales. This isn’t the future — this is happening right now.

About the author: Kevin Jeppesen

Founder of Ascendily

Kevin Jeppesen is the founder of Ascendily, building growth ecosystems for global ecommerce brands through the three core marketing pillars of SEO, ads, and email marketing.

Kevin currently manages clients with combined annual revenue exceeding $27 million, and has helped clients grow from $20K/month stores into brands doing over $1M in monthly sales. His methodology focuses on building integrated systems that deliver sustainable, scalable results.

I’d boil this deck’s core message down to three points:

1. Search behavior is changing radically: users are shifting from “searching for links” to “demanding answers.” Over 60% of searches end in zero clicks — brands have to appear directly in AI’s answers to be seen.
2. AI traffic is extremely valuable: sure, the volume of AI-referred traffic is small, but the intent is razor-sharp — conversion rates are 23x higher than traditional search. That’s real money.
3. Seize the window: most people haven’t caught on yet — right now is the cheapest time to “seed” your brand influence.

In short, Kevin’s take is sharp: “The best time to influence large language models (LLMs) is today!”

As users increasingly abandon the traditional search box for direct conversations with AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, the question is: can your brand become the “recommended answer” AI gives?

Today, combining my own hands-on experience with Kevin’s talk, I’m going to break down how to make AI your brand’s “biggest fan.”

The Sea Change in Search Behavior: From “Links” to “Answers”

Let’s start with a set of staggering numbers:

🔥 The impressive performance of AI traffic

• 23x conversion rate: AI-referred visitors convert at 23x the rate of traditional search
• 72.5% vs 60.4%: AI visitor engagement far exceeds traditional search visitors
• 82% of sales: ChatGPT alone drives 82% of AI traffic sales
• 800M weekly active users: AI chat tools have reached a scale comparable to Google Search

Beyond these core stats, there are more trends worth watching:

• AI chat tools now have 800 million weekly active users, 400 million monthly active users, and 84.4 billion monthly visits — nearly on par with Google Search.
• Over 60% of searches end right on the results page, with users never clicking through to a website.

What does this mean?

The Zero-Click era is really here. Users want direct answers, not a pile of links to sort through. If your brand can’t show up inside AI-generated answers, you might as well be invisible.

Kevin calls this current phase the “Silver Age” of ecommerce AI. Most people haven’t reacted yet — and that’s exactly our opportunity: a window to get positioned at low cost and jump ahead.

So how do we actually do it? Kevin shared 7 methods for “manipulating” AI. Some of them are a bit “wild,” but they’re extremely thought-provoking.

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7 Ways to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

Note: some of these methods involve “black hat” or “gray hat” tactics that can harm your brand if executed carelessly. My advice: understand the underlying logic, then execute with a “white hat” mindset.

Method 1: Entity Buzz — Unify Your Brand “Persona” Across the Web

I call this “brand persona management”; in professional terms, it’s entity optimization.

Core logic: AI gets to know you by learning information about you across the entire web. If the information about you is messy or contradictory, AI gets “confused” about you. Conversely, if you output unified, positive brand information across every channel, you can “reverse-program” AI to recommend you according to the persona you’ve designed.

Step-by-step execution:

1. Brand information audit: ask mainstream AIs — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity — separately: “What do you know about [your brand]?”
2. Trace and organize: follow up with: “Which sources, links, and specific passages did you reference? Please compile them into a table.”
3. Identify gaps: compare the information AI gives you with the brand image you want, and find outdated, inconsistent, or incorrect points.
4. Update systematically:
   • Owned channels: your official site, social media (LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube), etc. These are easiest to control — fix them immediately.
   • Third-party channels: industry news, guest blogs, affiliate marketing sites, etc. Email the owners and politely request corrections.
   • Semi-owned channels: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Google/Bing/Apple business listings and knowledge graphs. Go claim and verify them, and fill in complete information.
5. Monitor continuously: check AI’s answers daily for changes. You can usually see results within 24 hours. Keeping your information consistent across the web is the key to reinforcing AI’s “muscle memory” of your brand.

Method 2: Rent-a-Reputation — “Parasiting” on High-Authority Sites

This is what we call “parasite SEO.”

Core logic: AI, like search engines, “worships” authority. They deeply trust high-authority, high-reputation sites (like Forbes, The New York Times, top industry media). If you can get your brand onto these sites, you’re borrowing their “halo of authority.”

Step-by-step execution:

1. Find the “host”: look for sites with DR (Domain Rating) 70+ and real traffic. Use tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to filter.
2. Budget assessment: publishing an article on these sites costs anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the site’s authority and brand influence.
3. Content types: these article types work best:
   • Listicles:
     • Top 10 Companies Selling [your product] in 2025
     • Best Brands For [your product category] 2025
   • Comparisons/reviews:
     • [your brand] Review [year]
     • [competitor brand] Alternatives: [number] Better Options
     • Is [your brand] Worth It? An Expert Review
4. Amplify the effect:
   • Speed up indexing: after publication, use indexing tools (like SpeedyIndex) to accelerate crawling by AI and search engines.
   • Backlink boost: find cheaper “parasite” sites to publish related-topic articles that link to your core “parasite article,” forming a “parasite network.”

Neo’s warning: in its March 2024 update, Google explicitly said it would crack down on “site reputation abuse,” and sites like Forbes took a heavy traffic hit as a result. So when playing “parasite SEO,” focus more on content quality and make sure articles genuinely deliver value to readers — not pure ads.

Method 3: Press Buzz — Create “Real” News Events

Core logic: use professional PR press release services to publish newsworthy events, getting your brand concentrated coverage from major authoritative media in a short period. This “signal stacking” makes AI believe your brand carries serious weight in the industry.

Step-by-step execution:

1. Plan your news angle:
   • Publish an industry research report or survey (you can do one on platforms like Pollfish for a few hundred dollars).
   • Create an industry award — and “win” it yourself.
   • Announce a major strategic partnership or company milestone.
2. Optimize cleverly: naturally weave the keywords and brand information you want to rank for into the press release headline and body.
3. Choose distribution channels: pick paid press release platforms with partnerships with top-tier news agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters.

Method 4: Community Buzz — Get Into Reddit and Quora

Core logic: AI places high value on UGC (user-generated content) on platforms like Reddit and Quora, because it represents “real users’” “unbiased” opinions and word-of-mouth.

Step-by-step execution:

1. Account aging: buy aged Reddit accounts with karma from platforms like redaccs.com.
2. IP isolation: give each account its own proxy IP and browser session to avoid linked account bans.
3. Blend into the community: post, comment, and interact in relevant subreddits like a normal user to build the account’s activity and trust.
4. Find topics: use Reddit search or Google advanced search (site:reddit.com "your product/keyword") to find relevant discussion threads.
5. “Human + AI” replies: find high-upvoted replies, study their tone and style with AI, then craft natural replies incorporating your brand info. Never copy-paste AI-generated content directly.

Quora works similarly — the core is optimizing your profile and answering questions as an industry expert.

Method 5: Review Buzz — Make Your Good Reviews “Visible”

Core logic: the quantity, star rating, sentiment, and content diversity of reviews are AI’s primary trust signal for judging product quality. One review saying “this running shoe solved my plantar fasciitis during marathon training” is far more convincing than ten thousand “Great product!” reviews.

White-hat execution:

1. Email/SMS review requests: send review request emails or texts on days 7, 14, and 21 after delivery, offering a small discount or points as incentive, with direct links to review platforms like Trustpilot and GMB.
2. Packing inserts: put a small card in the product packaging with a QR code guiding users to review, plus a nudge on review direction — like “share what problem this [product] solved for you.”

Black-hat execution:

• Buy reviews: find a reliable service, test with small batches, and make sure review source countries match your target market. Publish reviews in batches, at a measured pace — don’t dump them all at once. Write the review content yourself, varying language, tone, length, and keywords to mimic real user review habits.

Method 6: Forum Buzz — Go Deep Into Vertical Industry “Homes”

Core logic: beyond general communities like Reddit/Quora, vertical industry forums are another UGC treasure trove. AI looks there for more professional, deeper discussions and uses them as “external” opinions.

Step-by-step execution:

1. Find core forums: just ask AI: “For [your industry], which top forums do you frequently cite answers from?”
2. Register and age accounts in bulk: sign up for all relevant forums, age the accounts, and participate naturally in discussions.
3. Promote at the right time: once an account has built trust, naturally mention your brand at an appropriate moment, framed as sharing experience or solving a problem.

Method 7: Wiki Buzz — Climb to the “Peak of Authority”

Core logic: Wikipedia is one of the most authoritative sources in AI’s eyes. Getting onto Wikipedia in itself means your brand has achieved “notability” — an extremely powerful trust signal.

Step-by-step execution:

1. Start with Wikidata: Wikidata is Wikipedia’s data hub. First create a Wikidata entry for your brand and complete the basic information.
2. Spread everywhere: create as many entries and pieces of content related to your brand as possible on other Wikimedia projects — Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and so on.
3. Use Schema markup: deploy solid Organization and sameAs schema markup on your official site to help search engines and AI better understand your “entity” and link it to your content across the Wikimedia projects.
4. Create a Wikipedia page: once you’ve accumulated enough third-party authoritative coverage (from Methods 2 and 3), attempt to create a Wikipedia page. Hiring an experienced Wikipedia editor gives you a much higher success rate.

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Neo’s Take: From SEO to AEO — Building Your Brand Moat

Kevin’s talk reveals the new marketing playbook of the AI era — Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

This marks an important shift: we must proactively manage and optimize our brand’s online entity information through a multi-channel, cross-platform strategy.

Its core is no longer optimizing individual pages around keywords — it’s building a unified, positive, authoritative information matrix across the entire web around your “brand entity.”

All seven methods are essentially “bricks” for your brand entity, raising its “trustworthiness” and “recommendation value” in AI’s eyes. Some of them skate in gray areas, but the underlying logic is universal: leave your brand’s mark everywhere users might show up.

In the AI era, traffic entrances are becoming both more fragmented and more concentrated. Fragmented are the information channels; concentrated is AI, the “super entrance.”

Stop staring only at your Google rankings. It’s time to look up and figure out how to make AI happily “endorse” your brand.

Have you started laying out your AEO strategy? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.