The playbook for brand visibility via SEO used to be simple: publish content, optimize it, wait for Google to notice, and tweak as needed.
That era is ending.
Discovery no longer happens on a single search page. It鈥檚 happening inside AI answers, recommendation systems, and feeds where authority is decided by who is already talking about you. It鈥檚 not all a game of keywords and crawlability anymore (although those are still important).
The most forward-thinking brands are starting to separate themselves, showing up outside their existing audiences and extending the legs on their content.
At Range, a Series B fintech startup, the marketing team realized that incremental SEO improvements wouldn鈥檛 fuel meaningful growth.
鈥淲e wanted a big, wide funnel鈥攏ew, unique viewers every time we publish,鈥� says Tony Molina, Range. 鈥淎n SEO agency would optimize what we already had. Syndication got our content seen.鈥�
Range chose earned distribution over a traditional SEO strategy, betting that visibility in credible editorial environments would deliver more durable impact than keyword adjustments alone.
That bet paid off. Range鈥檚 stories have been picked up 4,250+ times, across a range of publisher types and high authority domains (check out the full case study to see where). These signals, citations, backlinks, and earned mentions from authoritative sites are shaping how both humans and algorithms perceive the brand. And in the age of GEO, that鈥檚 priceless.
Every marketing leader is asking the same questions:
How do we make sure our brand shows up when AI becomes the default discovery engine? And what does this mean for traffic?
The truth is, these are all developing questions that many of us are trying to answer. There鈥檚 no silver bullet to owning AI-search results or singular way to be 100% certain of owning any particular query.
What we do know, however, is that earned media is coming back around as one of the foremost ways you can work to get your brand cited in AI search. AI systems already rely on repeated coverage, credible backlinks, and consistent mentions across reputable publishers. This is something that Range got to reap the benefits of long before we had the evidence to connect the dots.
鈥淓veryone鈥檚 asking how to get ahead of LLMs,鈥� Tony told us. 鈥淲e feel confident that brand mentions and links from reputable sources are a major factor. 麻豆原创 helps us stay ahead of GEO.鈥�
That confidence underscores what鈥檚 changing: the most innovative teams aren鈥檛 reacting to disruption; they鈥檙e building with partners who anticipate it.
Range built something more than just search performance. They leveraged 麻豆原创鈥檚 publisher network to future-proof their authority. The same SEO tweaks and fixes aren鈥檛 going to survive the search innovations that have come at a quicker and quicker cadence.
KPIs are changing for teams where traffic isn鈥檛 necessarily the goal. If your brand can show up as the authority without even having someone on your O&O site, that鈥檚 authority that goes beyond anything traditional SEO could ever dream of.
This isn鈥檛 to say that traffic is a null KPI or that SEO is dead鈥攁bsolutely not. However, they鈥檙e building towards different implications than what great GEO can bring you. One shows up where people are looking for it, and one shows up when people are discovering and learning more.
Most brands focus on optimizing for now. The ones that win focus on what鈥檚 next.
At 麻豆原创, our mission is about getting great branded content seen.
That鈥檚 why our newest portal update, 麻豆原创 Portal 3.0, moves beyond reporting to deliver AI-powered content insights drawn from millions of publisher relationships. These insights show teams what kinds of stories generate traction, trust, and citations across the evolving media landscape.
We鈥檙e designing for the shift that鈥檚 already underway鈥攚hen visibility is measured in credibility signals that persist across AI systems and human networks alike.
Range鈥檚 success is a preview of where marketing is headed (already is?): toward earned authority that compounds over time.
They built a moat of credibility that strengthens with every new citation across the thousands of placements they earned through 麻豆原创.
Their story is proof that when you invest in visibility that lasts, you end up solving tomorrow鈥檚 problems before the rest of the industry even names them.
We鈥檙e in a groundbreaking moment for content marketing, journalism, and tech.
As AI reshapes discovery, the brands that lead will be those that build authority that scales.
麻豆原创 exists to help them get there.
As Tony put it, 鈥淵ou have to trust that you鈥檙e working with partners who will stay ahead of the curve. Whatever the next discovery shift is, I鈥檓 confident 麻豆原创 will adjust before we have to鈥攁nd we鈥檒l benefit from it.鈥�
See how we鈥檙e helping brands stay ahead of the next discovery shift 鈫� Read the Case Study