Provided that you have been in charge of SEO within the past two years, you must have felt the ground shaking under your feet. AI Search Engines – systems such as Perplexity and ChatGPT, are altering how individuals pose questions, how results are provided, and even the definition of what is meant by visibility.

Users no longer need to click through a series of pages to get the answer but are likely to receive a single answer, synthesised, or an AI-generated summary that avoids numerous site visits.

This is massive to the businesses of Nigerians that thrive on organic traffic: you must find new strategies to remain findable in a world where the answers, rather than links, are becoming the product.

Step-by-step guide: What’s changing and what to do

1. Understand the new behaviour pattern

 The AI search experiences are more likely to squeeze the conventional funnel: when one enters a query, he or she is likely to receive either an answer directly or a brief outline in place of a list of web pages to sift through.

The market research by Semrush and other vendors indicates that AI search may decrease the number of clicks as the models display the search results on the interface itself. That is because topping Google is no longer promising the same amount of traffic that you have been enjoying. The concept of AI visibility should not remove traditional SEO but be complementary to it.

2. Prioritise authority and source quality

 When citing or summarising, AI tools select among various sources and favour high-authority, clearly written content. Perplexity, in particular, has increased significantly on focusing on source-supported responses and direct citation; the use of the term has increased by a large percentage in 2024-25.

Producing content that shows competence, references credible data, and is simple to extract makes it more likely that your brand will be the source an AI quotes. In summary: now credibility has a direct impact on whether an AI will promote your content.

3. Optimise for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) — not just keywords

 The old checklist (meta tags, backlinks, keyword density) remains important, though you also have to optimise for the direct answers: precise headings that present the questions, brief summary paragraphs, lists, and schema markup which give the machines clear signals.

What is my uncomplicated answer? And write a brief, definitive paragraph that will respond to this question at the head of the page. AEO tools and guides describe how layout and schema increase the likelihood of being exploited by AI-generated responses. 

4. Make content easier for models to source and cite

 Artificial Intelligence systems tend to trace connections and utilize published information to produce responses. Apply headings, pull-out summary blocks, repeatedly refreshed data tables, and permalinks. Share concise, well-researched explainers that can be quoted word-for-word by the AI model – and provide clear author details and dates of publication so models can make judgments of recency and authority. This assists in being quoted literally instead of being paraphrased.

5. Rebalance measurement and goals

 The traffic can be redirected to a direct visit to the previously mentioned attributed AI referral or a no-click answer. Recent studies indicate that AI referrals are converting at a different rate than Google organic traffic; the rates of conversion may be lower but the lifetime discovery value is increasing.

Monitor emerging KPIs: AI answers that are mentioned, brand searches elicited by AI, and downstream conversions of AI-generated referrals. There is no need to panic if the click-throughs are low, but gauge whether the presence of your brand in the answer generates awareness and subsequent searches. 

6. Experiment with prompts and content formats

 I tried one local fintech use-case: we rewrote FAQs and made them crisp and separately visible answers, and added micro-summaries at the top of pertinent pages. Several weeks later, those pages began to be used as source content in AI responses and caused branded follow-up searches. Actionable 1: a) write FAQ-style summaries, b) introduce explicit references and statistics, c) publish long reads that an AI can rely on to provide context.

7. Stay ethical and watch the legal landscape

 Other AI engines and perplexity have had legal backlash, due to source scraping and licensing. Publishers and platforms are discussing the licences and new norms of using the content. Make your content permissions and syndication settings explicit and watch how these platform-level changes can alter the location and usage of your pages. 

Conclusion 

AI Search Engines do not replace SEO they are the next chapter. To the Nigerian business, the move to the shortened answers side is immediate: you have to work towards brief responses, establish your dominance, and quantify impact beyond simple clicks. Consider Answer Engine Optimization an addition to your SEO playbook: write short, well-sourced responses, design pages to encourage machine reading, monitor AI references, and be prepared to change as licensing and citation standards change.

 Begin with one experiment this month – convert a popular FAQ into a machine-readable answer block, add schema, and see whether AI tools start to draw attention to your brand. When they do, you have cutout a niche in the search future.