The situation
By mid-2025, the client’s blog was in trouble. Overall keyword visibility had been declining for over a year. The blog was invisible to AI Overviews at a moment when AI Overviews were starting to eat organic traffic across the category. Content was being published on a predictable cadence, but without a clear strategic frame for what generative engines actually want to surface.
The team knew something was wrong. What they didn’t have was a clear read on what specifically to fix, and a playbook for what to build toward.
The approach
We started with a full audit. Technical, content, and measurement. The content audit surfaced a large tail of pages that were doing more harm than good. The technical audit flagged structure and markup issues that were making retrieval harder than it needed to be. The measurement review made clear that without better tooling, no one would be able to tell whether any of this was working.
From there, the work split into three parallel streams.
Pruning. We removed or consolidated the long tail of content that was diluting topical authority and sending confusing signals. Not every page earns its keep, and ruthless editing was the first thing that needed to happen.
Refreshing. We rewrote the content that had real potential but was badly structured. Clear claims, explicit attribution, proper formatting, appropriate depth. The kind of editing that makes a page citable.
Net-new production. We authored original content designed from the ground up to be quoted by generative engines. Answer-shaped pieces. Explainers with real authority. Content with clear opinions from real experts. This is where the largest share of the citation growth came from.
The results
Nine months in, the transformation is clear.
AI Overview citations went from roughly 327 in the month before engagement began to 2,088 in January 2026. That’s a 6.4× increase, and the trajectory is still climbing.
Overall keyword visibility has nearly quadrupled. The blog now ranks for 6,615 keywords on page one or two of Google, up from 1,748 before the engagement started. Top 3 positions have grown from 269 to 758.
Most importantly, the team has a working measurement system to see all of this clearly, and a playbook to keep building on.
What we learned
The AI search shift is real and it rewards a specific kind of work. Not content farming. Not technical tricks. Disciplined editorial thinking paired with disciplined technical execution. Brands that commit to both are going to own the next decade of search visibility. Brands that keep doing what they’ve been doing will quietly disappear from the results.