AIO is the New SEO: How AI Tools Are Rewriting the Rules of Search

We’re witnessing a major shift in how consumers and businesses search for products and services — and it’s happening faster than most marketers realise. With tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews becoming mainstream, the traditional search journey is being replaced by AI-powered discovery.

In the UK alone, over 18 million adults have now used a generative AI tool — a number that has grown by more than 35% in the last year. A quarter of consumers are already turning to AI to help them shop, research and compare providers. For marketers, this demands a fundamental rethink of how visibility, influence and performance are measured and achieved online.

At Leopard Co, we’ve coined a new term for this next era of digital discoverability: AIO - AI Optimisation. Just as SEO defined the rules of engagement for web search, AIO is emerging as the critical discipline for ensuring your brand is visible, referenced and trusted in AI-generated content.

It’s a concept that evolved organically through our ROAR methodology - particularly in the Research and Opportunity phases of brand and strategy projects. As we examined how brands could remain relevant in a fast-moving digital environment, one insight became clear: If you're not being found by AI, you're not being found at all.

Why AIO Matters

AI platforms are increasingly the first point of discovery — not just an enhancement of traditional search. When someone asks ChatGPT “What’s the best marketing agency in Birmingham?”, they’re not browsing 10 links. They’re reading one AI-generated summary — and your brand either appears or it doesn’t.

More importantly, AI doesn’t rank content the way Google does. It draws from sources it considers clear, trusted, and contextually relevant. That changes the optimisation playbook completely.

Digital PR: The Bridge Between SEO and AIO

For years, Digital PR has been one of the most effective tactics for building SEO authority — earning high-quality backlinks, improving domain ratings, and driving organic visibility. But in the age of AIO, its value has grown even further.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity don’t just crawl your website — they pull content and citations from across the web, favouring brands that are talked about, trusted, and linked to from reputable third-party sources.

This means Digital PR is no longer just about link-building. It’s about building brand salience in the AI ecosystem.

At Leopard Co, our Digital PR campaigns are designed to work across both worlds:

• In SEO, they help improve rankings and referral traffic through high-authority placements

• In AIO, they help your brand get cited, summarised and surfaced in AI-generated answers

Whether it’s thought leadership in national press, expert commentary in niche publications, or smart stunts that generate coverage across the marketing and business media — we build campaigns that give AI a reason to reference you.

This is where traditional SEO and modern AIO converge — and where Digital PR becomes a multiplier.