AI SEO: Writing That’s Specific May Get Cited More

AI SEO that prioritizes content that is specific may be a key to getting cited by AI search engines like Anthropic’s Claude.

Someone posted on social media about their experience writing deep and insightful articles last year and was pleasantly surprised to see that AI was leaning on their articles and even referencing them. Their secret was to choose highly specific topics, which is a good idea.

SEO And Natural Language AI

SEOs like to write articles based on keywords, and that’s actually how people did it in the relative caveman days of SEO, well over 25 years ago. Natural language processing has come a long way, and LLMs are now able to understand topics and questions in a conversational manner. So it’s truly outdated to proceed with SEO by focusing on keywords.

User behavior and what other sites and people are saying about a site or product are increasingly important. The best way to influence that is with content that’s insightful and gives users what they’re looking for and a lot of it, as often as possible.

It’s Not Just About Being Insightful

The person who started the discussion pointed out that they chose a “specific enough topic” and wrote something insightful about it. That’s a deceptively simple tip, but it is one of the key points about writing for an audience of humans and machines that interpret content as if they were humans.

Choosing a specific enough topic is about keeping the article focused on a topic and not allowing it to stray. One of the hallmarks of good writing is the willingness to remove the bits that tend to wander off topic. This is an American style of writing, although Europeans as far back as Charles Dickens knew the value of staying on topic so that the effect is a constant stream of interesting sentences that pull a reader all the way to the end of the page.

Writing is an art, like painting and composing music. But you don’t have to have a literature or journalism degree to engage users with text.

How Someone Got Lots Of Love From Claude AI

Bluesky user @danabra.mov posted about their experience writing an insightful article that subsequently began getting referred to by Claude AI.

He posted:

“If you write an insightful blog post on a specific enough topic, and people link to it, you have a real chance at influencing everyone’s LLM output in a year or so. it’s a bit wild.

I wrote some articles last year that I thought nobody would read because they’re super long. And now I see Claude regurgitating what I wrote in those articles in a perfectly condensed way (and occasionally explicitly referring to the posts). they took away exactly what I wanted the reader to take!

For me it’s a relief because i was worried about falling interest to longform blogs and declining readership. but in a sense maybe it has significantly expanded! It’s just that my reader is now infinitely patient and really wants to hear the entire thing.”

Others Agree That Being Specific Is Key To Success With AI Citations

The response to Dan’s post was overwhelmingly positive, with one person commenting that it gave them hope.

One person named Tyler shared that they had a similar experience with content they published that was specific.

‪@tylergaw.com‬ responded:

“I’ve seen a couple of mine, not even that insightful, just specific, get pulled into them and used within like 6 months. Wild.”

The person who started the discussion, Dan, agreed:

“I mean yeah but I think being specific by itself is enough…”

Why Is Being Specific Enough?

Based on my well over forty years of writing experience, including writing poems, short stories, one novel, blog posts, and articles for Search Engine Journal, my opinion on the matter is that focusing on being specific helps to keep a work focused in a way that matches the reader’s focus. The moment the article strays off topic is when the reader loses interest and jumps away.

Being insightful is not enough. Being witty or clever is nice in moderation, but in higher doses it becomes off topic and will, in my opinion, lose the reader. That’s why anyone who writes content must be willing to ruthlessly cut words out to keep it focused and specific (on topic).

What Google Said About The Topic

Google’s John Mueller reposted Dan’s post with the comment:

“Make more insightful & useful stuff.”

There was one skeptic in the crowd who argued that the economics remove the incentive to put in the work.

They wrote:

“Why on earth would anyone put in the effort required at this point only to have it immediately stolen, receive no compensation and no credit. It’s never been more hostile environment to be a creative. The economics DO NOT WORK.”

Yes, it’s true that today’s environment is hostile to creators because of AI. Yet there is always an opportunity for success by writing about the topics that interest you because they will be sure to be of interest to someone else.