Re-order your content for search dominance
Damien says: “Re-order your content to future-proof your search dominance.”
Is search dominance more difficult in 2026?
“It's not necessarily more difficult, but you will need to change how you see, order, organise, and structure the content that you want to offer to your users – not only on your website.
It goes far beyond content on a web page. You need to think about modular content, structured content, and content as blocks that are reusable across different channels and platforms, more than just writing pages and pages of content.”
What does it mean to re-order your content?
“First of all, you need to make it re-orderable in the first place. You need to structure and organise your content in a way that allows you to re-order it and be flexible with it.
By re-ordering, I also mean that you should always put the evidence first. If it's a lengthy article, you want to summarise it at the beginning, but it’s more than that as well. Whatever cannot be generated by LLMs needs to come first.
Start with your conclusion, the data that you are sharing, and why you came to that conclusion, before you start the article. Don’t tease the user. In this modern world, people don’t have time to wait until the end of the article to get the conclusion.
Of course, you should always serve the users first, but with this structure, you will serve LLMs and search engine bots too.
That juicy bit will come first, and of course, that's going to attract attention. It also really matches modern user behaviour and the way that people are looking for content now. In this new world, we all want everything really quickly. We don't want to wait; we don't want to read. People want their information straight away.
Evidence-first content is not a new concept; it's a traditional way of doing marketing. I work in the medical sector, and when you put the clinical data first, it lets users know that everything else is based on that. If it's not, it's not going to get the interest of the end users.”
What other elements should you incorporate within your content to make sure that your structure is relevant to LLMs in the future?
“The key things are adding evidence and statistics – anything that you can add to reclaim your content and make it ungeneratable.
LLMs are good at remixing content from lots of different sources, but this is your content. You need to reclaim it. You are the source of that content, and you need to claim it at the top of that page.
It’s about incorporating whatever you can say about your products, your services, or anything you offer to the users.
You can also do this with existing content. If you have blog posts on your website that are more opinion-based, you can add more evidence to them and make them more appealing to both AI search engines and the way that consumers prefer to consume content nowadays.
Create a good inventory of juicy content on your website. You want to move to a modular content strategy, making sure that everything can be contained in a box. That is the best way to look at content in the future.”
What does a modular content strategy look like?
“It means that you create different blocks of content.
Content can be something evidence-based, but it can also be images and other media assets. Put all of these in different blocks that you can reuse across different platforms and channels.
It's a little bit like the idea of a headless CMS. You can use different content blocks like Lego to build and rebuild different pages or assets.
Consider each of those different elements within your content page as something that can be published elsewhere – for example, on social media – but also as sections that can be consumed by LLMs.
The best way of doing this is to start thinking about a PIM and a DAM. These solutions exist in big organisations, and lots of people already know about them, but you don't need to be a big brand to have a PIM and a DAM.
A PIM is a Product Information Management system, and a DAM is a Digital Asset Management system. They're both databases, and they are used as the single source of truth for your content, your offer, your services, your products – everything about your brand and what you want to deliver on the web.”
Why does content need to be accessible by design?
“Now is the time to be doing this. Accessibility is trendy. We all know about the new law that came into effect this year, but it’s about more than just getting upset over compliance.
Being accessible by design means that you make your content as easy as possible for both LLMs and users to digest. Consider the lazy LLM principle. We know that LLMs will always try to find the easiest path to information, to retrieve it and get to the source. They like to drink water from the source, as long as it's really easy to access.
If you make your content and your digital assets accessible, and make sure that your content is well-structured and logically organised, it will please LLMs – and, of course, the users as well.”
Is there a certain age range or reading comprehension level that you recommend writing content for?
“Absolutely, and this is also an accessibility principle. You want your content to match the average literacy level for your target audience, which is a principle that has been highlighted in all of the accessibility best practices.
It depends on the content, too. If you want to be a subject expert on something, of course, it will be a little bit technical sometimes. It depends on what type of content you're creating.
If you're describing a product or a service, I would definitely go for basic English. Make it simple, and use simple wording. However, if you are going deep into a subject, the language will need to become a bit more technical.
This principle is a little bit less universal than some others, in terms of accessibility. However, it's always a good idea to ask yourself whether you can make your content simpler and easier for the average person to read.”
Is it a good idea to look at what LLMs are already publishing to see what they like and what they don't like?
“Definitely. However, please don't generate content from LLMs and publish it on your website. That makes me shiver. I often hear people asking to use LLMs to publish articles. Just don't.
Why would you do that? The user is going to do that with LLMs already, so they are going to get that content themselves. Why do you want to publish it on your website? It’s a terrible idea.
Having been in the SEO industry for 20 years, I remember the bad practices, and it seems like history is repeating itself. I have a feeling that we're going back to some bad practices like link farms or spinning articles.”
Could you use a custom GPT, with your brand tone of voice and filtering to remove commonly-used phrases, so that it sounds more human?
“Refining is fun. You can use LLMs and artificial intelligence to get better at what you offer in your content, but don't generate it from scratch – even if you are a little bit scared to face a blank page.
The evidence, stats, testimonials, and anything else that is unique to you should always be part of your content. Just generating content purely through LLMs is not going to go far.
I use LLMs in the ideation phase sometimes, certainly, but never for pure content generation – and definitely not for the content that describes what you offer.”
How do you incorporate experts and real stories into your content?
“You want to do that in a way that makes it reusable. Again, it goes back to the principle of modular content. When you've got an expert or a real story, try to put it in a box. Put it in your DAM or your PIM, for example.
All of this needs to stay somewhere in a database, instead of just in a piece of content. Then, you can reuse, refine, and enrich all of that, and that will be your single source of truth.
That will also bring consistency throughout your brand messaging: your vision, your mission, your promise, and everything else. By having a single source of truth, and by reordering and organising your content in a DAM and a PIM, you are future-proofing your message.”
Damien, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?
“Start with a PIM and a DAM, if you don't have them already.
Then, order your content. Make it accessible. Make it structured. It's going to be sustainable, it's going to be accurate, and it's going to future-proof your search dominance.”
Damien Robert is a Search Marketing and Web Accessibility Lead. Find out more over at Damien-Robert.com.