Performance SEO (the legacy model) is about capturing existing demand — optimizing keywords for rankings, clicks, and CTR so users find you in a static list of ten blue links. Demand SEO (the AI era) is about creating mental availability — influencing the synthesized answers AI engines generate, so being named in an answer becomes the brand-awareness event itself. The shift changes the primary unit from keywords to entities (AI reasons in concepts, not strings), the mechanism from blue links to synthesized answers, and the metrics from clicks to share of model, brand mentions, and entity sentiment. Judged by click-through rate, Demand SEO looks like failure; it’s measured instead by how often and how favorably the brand is cited in AI answers.
Full guide → From Performance SEO to Demand SEO
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