How do you rank on ChatGPT or Gemini for a specific keyword?

LLMs are probabilistic — you can't guarantee a number-one ranking the way you can target a Google SERP position. What you can do is increase the frequency with which your brand appears for specific queries. The most effective current method is placing 20–30 unique versions of a listicle article on different websites targeting a niche ICP-specific keyword. The more specific the keyword, the less competition from other inputs and the more consistently your brand appears.

What products benefit most from buying guide content?

Products with an AOV of $400 or more, or products that are highly technical — running shoes, peptides, supplements in emerging categories, appliances, luxury goods. Buyers of these products have significant research needs before purchasing. Products that don't benefit: basic apparel, everyday items, anything a consumer understands without explanation. Generic topical authority content for simple products is no longer effective.

Should I build backlinks directly to Shopify collection pages?

Conservatively, yes — but with a skewed ratio. The recommended split is 70–80% of backlinks to the branded homepage and 20–30% to specific collection pages, with internal links distributing homepage authority to collections. Some higher-ticket niches (furniture, for example) show success at a 50/50 ratio. Building heavily to collection pages without this balance creates risk.

Which e-commerce categories need topical authority content?

Any category where products go in, on, or touch the body from a health perspective — supplements, skincare, hair care, sleep products, mattresses, pillows, wearables, food and beverage, beauty, makeup, red light therapy, air purifiers. Also electronics adjacent to health. Google treats these as YMYL categories and requires demonstrated topical expertise before ranking category and product pages in competitive SERPs.

How is topical authority content different from generic blog writing?

Topical authority requires creating content that's actually better than what currently ranks — not just putting a page on the internet. A 500-word AI-generated article won't rank against 3,000-word competitor guides with pricing, diagrams, images, and examples. The process: scrape competitors' top traffic pages in Ahrefs, create better versions, find gaps competitors missed, and fill those gaps. Every page needs to be rankable, not just published.

5 SEO and AEO Strategies Working Right Now for E-Commerce Brands

The agency currently works with over 100 seven-, eight-, and nine-figure Shopify brands. Ten of those clients each generated over $1 million from SEO in the last 12 months. One generated $60,000 from ChatGPT referrals alone in the same period. These are the five strategies driving those results right now.

1. Listicles for Bottom-of-Funnel AEO Visibility

LLMs are probabilistic — there's no "ranking number one" on ChatGPT the way there is on Google. What there is: frequency of appearance for specific queries. The agency shows up in Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT for searches like "best Shopify SEO agency for eight-figure brands" because the brand name appears across many sites in the context of that query. Here's how to replicate it:

Pick a niche target keyword tied to a specific ICP. Broad keywords — "best pillow," "best protein" — have too many competing inputs. The more specific, the less competition in the LLM's training data.
Find 20–30 websites that accept guest posts or paid placement of listicle content.
Write an article titled "Best [Target Keyword] for [ICP]" using AI, then spin 20–30 unique versions of it — one per site. The same article on 30 sites won't work.
Place the articles, pay the fees, and collect the brand mentions. A backlink from these sites is helpful but not required — the mention itself is what matters for LLM visibility.

This is the fastest route to LLM visibility available right now. Brands willing to move on it in the next week can see results within seven days.

2. Buying Guides for High-Ticket or Technical Products

Buying guides work for products with an AOV of $400 or more, or products that require significant research before purchase — running shoes, peptides, supplements in emerging categories, luxury goods, appliances, fragrances. They do not work for products consumers already understand. Writing a buying guide for hoodies, t-shirts, or any basic consumer product is a waste of time — the category of generic topical authority for simple products stopped working years ago.

For products where buying guides do work, the sourcing process matters. Scrape Reddit threads, Amazon reviews, and YouTube comments related to the category. Find every pain point, concern, comparison, and question buyers raise before making the purchase. Write the guide using that real-world buyer data and verify every claim for accuracy before publishing. AI-generated guides from Ahrefs or generic prompts frequently contain fabricated price points and invented pain points — publishing inaccurate information about a $500+ purchase destroys credibility instantly.

Build internal links to the buying guide from any related blog content, and from the buying guide to the target money pages (collection pages and product pages). The guide captures informational search intent; the internal links convert that traffic toward purchase intent.

3. Competitor Hijacking for Brands with Large Competitors

Two article types, both working. "Competitor alternatives" articles rank for a competitor's branded search terms and capture in-market buyers looking for options. "Competitor vs. your brand" comparison articles produce significantly higher revenue per click. One brand's data: alternatives articles generated $3,400 from 925 clicks over six months; comparison articles generated $20,500 from 1,400 clicks — roughly six times the revenue per click from 500 more clicks.

The prerequisite is a competitor with meaningful branded search volume. A competitor is worth targeting if they meet at least two of three criteria: they regularly go viral on social media (Instagram, TikTok), they spend five figures or more per month on Meta or TikTok ads, or they generate at least $1M/year in revenue. Brands nobody searches for produce no hijackable traffic. The "Rolex alternative" keyword alone gets 250 searches per month — model-specific Rolex alternatives get another 400–450 each. For a brand positioning against that level of incumbency, this content is some of the most efficient revenue production available.

How to do it: find the competitor, write a "[Competitor] Alternatives" article positioning your brand as the primary alternative with a few other brands listed. Write a "[Competitor] vs. [Your Brand]" comparison covering price, quality, use cases, and what makes each brand better for different buyer profiles. Use publicly available data only. Build backlinks to and from these articles.

4. Moneyball SEO — Collection Pages for Every Subcategory Keyword

Ranking for one keyword is one shot on goal. Ranking for every subcategory variant is 20, 30, 50 shots. One client's bed frame subcollection pages generated $31,300 over 12 months — across keywords like "solid wood bed frame," "solid wood king bed frame," "wood bed frame," and their variants. That number continues to grow as impressions and clicks build.

The process:

Open Ahrefs and find every sub-keyword of the main product category — by size, material, use case, price range, room type, and any other relevant modifier.
Create a collection page only for keywords the brand actually sells. A collection page with no products is not going to drive traffic.
Link all subcollections to the main collection. Link the main collection and the highest-priority subcollections from the homepage and main navigation.
Build backlinks primarily to the homepage — 70–80% — and 20–30% to specific collection pages. Let internal links distribute the authority. Higher-ticket niches can support a closer-to-50/50 split.

5. Topical Authority for YMYL and Adjacent Categories

Topical authority is no longer relevant for most e-commerce categories — but it's still very much required for YMYL and adjacent categories. The list is broader than most brands expect: supplements, skincare, hair care, sleep products (mattresses, pillows, sheets), wearables (smartwatches, GPS collars, smart rings), food and beverage, beauty and makeup, red light therapy, air purifiers. Anything that goes in, on, or touches the body from a health perspective. Google requires demonstrated topical expertise before ranking collection or product pages in these SERPs.

How to build it properly:

Use Ahrefs to find competitors' top supporting content pages that receive actual traffic. Create better versions of those articles — not just equivalent ones. If competitors' guides are 3,000 words with pricing, images, and diagrams, a 500-word AI output will not outrank them.
Use Ahrefs to find supporting keywords competitors haven't covered and create those pages too.
Feed the full list of topics into AI and ask it to identify gaps in the topical map. The Firecrawl MCP in Claude is useful here — it can crawl competitor sites and surface missing content angles.
Build internal links deliberately within clusters. Watch content links to watch content. Skincare content links to skincare content. Don't cross clusters.
Cite credible external sources — medical journals, WebMD, NIH, peer-reviewed studies — for any health-related claims. Uncited health claims damage credibility with both Google and consumers.

18 Minutes of AEO & SEO Advice that's Working Right Now