Brand Building Through Content; Fortune (LLMs) Favors the Bold (Data-Driven)

It’s a new era for search marketing, and the race to show up in LLMs is surfacing as what will be the great gold rush of 2026. But to strike it rich in a new search landscape, we’re seeing that brands need to revamp approaches to content - as far as content is concerned, what worked for SEO may not work for LLMs. 

Evergreen pieces, once the bread and butter of top-of-funnel (TOFU) marketing, no longer fit the mold of large language models (LLMs). With this major shift in play, I’ve been thinking a lot about why evergreen pieces have lost their luster, how LLMs actually work, and what brands can do to stay sticky as this new paradigm for search plays out.

Rethinking Your Evergreen Strategy

Evergreen content has long been a reliable way to build brand awareness around relevant topics. The logic: by being the source/teacher for a given topic, brands can stay top of mind when people think about said topic. And for over a decade, producing high quality TOFU articles has been a relatively straightforward way to associate your company as an authority within the nuances of your respective industry.

Even better: in the world of SEO, the longer a piece of TOFU content existed and the more you added to that page - the more likely it was to rank. Produce a guide, and give it small updates every month… This content playbook reigned over the SEO game for a long time, and companies were built on the backs of it. Hubspot became the poster child of evergreen content done right.

Unfortunately, LLMs have gone and gobbled up all of that content, and are now producing “their own” answers, without sending traffic to the source, as Google did. The impact of this on those that invested heavily in evergreen TOFU content has been drastic. See: traffic to Hubspot’s blog at the end of 2024:

Fast-forward to now, when LLMs have transformed Search Engine Optimization to Search Everywhere Optimization, the benefits of “how-to” content no longer get surfaced or cited by the likes of ChatGPT. It’s frustrating that these LLMs were built off brands’ good ideas and content, without giving credit where it's due.

But to me, this moment is reminding us that we need to pay attention to how LLMs work, so that we can forge a new territory for brand content that’s a bit more bold and valuable for readers. 

Decoding How LLMs Actually Work

Let’s go behind the curtain. We’ve learned that ChatGPT and similar models don’t treat all types of queries equally. (Trust me on this, I even consulted ChatGPT itself.)

• For evergreen queries, like “How to prepare for a flood”, the LLM will pull from data that it was trained on from 2024 or earlier, and doesn’t even search the web. It provides no citations to the information it presents, which results in no traffic or value for brands, even if your content is stellar. Not great.
  
  
• For timely, ranked, or data-specific queries, like “Counties with the highest flood risk”, the LLM will search the web and show citations —it's a little like a runner saving its energy for the most important parts of the race. And since we know LLMs use so much energy, that approach makes some sense.

In my conversation with ChatGPT, I asked what types of content it’s more likely to cite. Direct quote: “Articles that include rankings, comparisons, charts, and clear sourcing are gold.”

Knowing this, brands can address a big blind spot that I’m seeing a lot now: they still target LLMs with the same content they used for Google.

What Brands Need to Do to Win in the LLM Era

Brands working with Stacker have been able to surpass the limitations of LLMs to get content that shows up in GEO.

Our platform distributed LawnStarter content to the media, driving hundreds of earned pickups, and in turn signaling to the LLM that the content was trustworthy enough to directly pull aspects of it into AI-generated answers around the topic. Their content is also ranking highly in search results for similar phrases, which has significantly boosted their visibility and authority. 

For Paylocity, publishing through Stacker’s newswire led to hundreds of pickups from authoritative media outlets, which helped them secure the number one ranking for strategic keywords in search results. 

To win the LLM game like Lawnstarter and Paylocity, brands should:

#1 Rethink TOFU content through a data and specificity lens

• Move away from general evergreen blog posts
• Focus on content that’s timely, ranked, or uniquely data-driven
• Prioritize specificity over generality — LLMs favor narrow, well-defined queries

#2 Create content that answers specific questions

• Directly address niche or high-intent questions users are likely to ask
• Build content around natural language queries (e.g., “What cities saw the biggest rent increases in 2024?”)
• Think like a research assistant: be useful, cited, and trustworthy

#3: Offer a unique or differentiated perspective

• Use proprietary data, internal expertise, or expert commentary
• Add interpretation and context, without just repeating public data
• Highlight methodology or sourcing to boost credibility

#4: Structure matters

• Use rankings, lists, comparisons, charts, and maps
• Keep formatting clean and scannable (LLMs parse better this way)
• Cite sources clearly and include publication dates where possible

#5: Distribute intelligently

• Get cited by trusted media outlets via syndication or earned media, like Stacker
• Prioritize visibility on domains with authority and high LLM pickup rates
• Build for dual discovery: LLMs + traditional search engines

There are a few ways you can start this journey to get your search results back on track.

How to set up your content for LLM success 

• Audit your current TOFU content for LLM relevance
• Identify content gaps around specific, data-backed questions
• Develop a repeatable data storytelling framework (internal + external data)
• Track which content gets cited in LLMs using direct prompt testing

The industry is still learning and adapting to the changes in SEO, but brands can still start making shifts now.

The Brands That Adapt Now Will Own the Next Era of Search

We are about to see a major reshuffling of visibility and brand equity online. The SEO playbook is changing quickly, and brands that continue to rely on keywords and content volume alone will fall behind.

The most forward-thinking brands are already adapting. They are investing in structured, data-backed storytelling. They are not doing this because it is trendy. They are doing it because it works, and it continues to deliver long-term value. This type of content earns citations from large language models, builds lasting trust, and increases visibility across both search engines and social platforms.

In the coming months, the brands that succeed will be the ones that show up in AI-generated answers. They will grow brand awareness through a mix of AI and traditional channels. They will also build trust that compounds over time by publishing content that offers real insight and utility.

The future will reward brands that take bold steps. The ones that use their proprietary data, hire real storytellers, and publish with real intent will be the ones that win.