Perplexity SEO: Optimizing for the Future of Search

What Is Perplexity SEO?

Perplexity SEO refers to optimizing content for Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, with the goal of that content being used as a source for Perplexity’s answers and getting featured as a reference.

While some traditional SEO practices still apply when optimizing content for Perplexity, some methods can increase the chances of your website getting featured.

Perplexity SEO 101

Perplexity and similar AI-powered search engines like authoritative and quality content that’s concise and easy to digest, so you’ll need to:

• Prioritize sources with citations and structured references
• Concisely and directly answer questions
• Include graphs, structured data, images, and other diverse content formats

Why Should You Care About Perplexity SEO?

Perplexity experienced huge growth since its start, and it’s still rising in popularity.

According to the latest stats from Exploding Topics, Perplexity has around 10 million active monthly users. In 2023, it recorded over 500 million search queries, while March 2024 was Perplexity’s best month hands down:

While these numbers are huge, it’s worth noting that Perplexity is still lagging behind competitors like ChatGPT. According to Saufter’s Perplexity revenue and statistics for 2025, Perplexity has around 20% of the entire AI-powered search engine market share.

While Google and other traditional search engines remain important, you shouldn’t overlook the growing popularity and use of AI-powered search engines. 

Optimizing your content for both traditional and AI-powered search engines can double the results of your efforts.

How Does Perplexity Select Sources?

Optimizing your content for traditional search engines will help get you featured and referenced by Perplexity. However, these 3 additional factors can further improve your chances of showing up:

• Fresh content > outdated content
• Trustworthy domains > lower-authority domains
• Media partnerships

Let’s break them down. 

Fresh Content > Outdated Content

Perplexity prioritizes fresh content much more than traditional search engines, as demonstrated by our Perplexity vs. Google Search experiment.

Perplexity relies on AI to search the internet in real time, gathering insights from multiple sources.

This means that regularly refreshing your content and adding recent sources can increase your chances of being featured on Perplexity. On the other hand, evergreen content might be cited less frequently.

Trustworthy Domains > Lower-Authority Domains

Like many search engines, Perplexity prioritizes content coming from trustworthy domains. 

In a nutshell, Perplexity prefers getting its information from reputable sources like Forbes and The Wall Street Journal over personal blogs and authors with no credentials or authority. 

The higher the authority of a website, the greater the chances of Perplexity using it as a source.

In a nutshell, strategies that help improve domain authority, such as link building and getting featured on other trustworthy websites, can help your content get discovered by Perplexity.

WebFX supports this claim:

Building backlinks takes time, effort, and, often, money. 

But it’s also one of the few SEO strategies with a well-documented correlation with both search engine rankings and, now, AI answer engines. In other words, it’s one of the most proven and backed-by-tangible-results SEO strategies.

Need help getting backlinks to boost your authority and chances of getting featured on Perplexity? We can help. 

So far, we’ve helped clients land 12k+ backlink placements in high-authority publications. We can do the same for you. Reach out and schedule a meeting with our team.

Media Partnerships

Perplexity is serious about featuring only the best content out there, hence its Publishers' Program.

This program allows Perplexity to use high-quality content from established publishers to generate answers. In return, publishers in the program receive a portion of advertising revenue. 

More specifically, Perplexity has partnerships with TIME, Der Spiegel, Fortune, Entrepreneur, The Texas Tribune, and WordPress.com. This is yet another proof that Perplexity prefers high-authority, credible sources.

How Are Users Currently Using Perplexity?

We personally love Perplexity’s ability to provide concise, direct answers with citations for deeper research, and we’re seeing other users value it for the same or similar reasons.

Most users currently use Perplexity for tasks like:

• Specific research and analysis
• In-depth research and analysis
• Finding relevant information and/or sources

We noticed that Perplexity users like the ability to ask questions or assign tasks in natural language and receive detailed and contextually relevant answers.

Another benefit is asking clarifying questions, requesting more information, or following up with related questions that came up during the research.

Others love using Perplexity to do in-depth research and analysis, find relevant information backed by trusted sources, and more.

Some even find Perplexity so helpful that they treat it as an assistant for research in specific work fields.

How Are Users NOT Using Perplexity Currently?

The majority of users are currently (still) not using Perplexity for:

• Short queries
• Navigational queries
• Diverse source exploration
• Image and video searches

Users still turn to traditional search engines, like Google, for these types of queries. 

More specifically, many users prefer search engines for fact-checking, navigating to specific websites, or finding multiple websites through a search query.

We’re also seeing that very few users rely on Perplexity for multimedia. Traditional search engines seem to be a lot more efficient in this area.

Important Perplexity Features for SEO

Understanding Perplexity’s core features is the first step toward understanding which SEO strategies to use to boost your content’s visibility in AI-powered search.

The most important Perplexity features for SEO include:

• Citations
• Contextual understanding
• People Also Ask
• Video & image optimization
• Social media integration
• Focus mode

Citations

Perplexity is big on transparency. That’s why they support every answer with at least 3 citations.

But it also works the other way around: including citations in your own content can help you get featured on Perplexity. 

It signals that you’re transparent and that you did at least some research. This in itself can boost the likelihood of your article being used for an answer.

Contextual Understanding

Perplexity’s answers are always direct, concise, and insightful. By crafting content that directly answers specific questions, you can boost the chances of that content getting used for those specific answers.

So, always try answering the questions directly, before elaborating further in your content. If the question you’re answering is how to optimize my content for SEO?, start your answer like this: 

To optimize your content for SEO, do X, Y, and Z…

Direct, clear, simple.

People Also Ask (Related Section)

Targeting long-tail keywords can help you align your content with how users use Perplexity to find answers, as well as Perplexity’s follow-up queries.

Since Perplexity generates follow-up questions based on prior context, these are often long-tail keywords worth including in your content.

By answering any of these questions, you can increase the chance of your answer being featured.

Video & Image Search

While video and image search isn’t Perplexity’s strongest suit, it’s still important to feature it in your content.

Perplexity does have certain image and video sourcing capabilities, and while they’re not the greatest, they can help your content stand out and get sourced.

Images and videos help improve readability and increase the chance of getting ranked in both traditional and AI-powered search engines. So, it’s not something to skip on.

Social Media

Perplexity includes sources from social media platforms, too. It’s not unusual to see Perplexity include sites like LinkedIn or Reddit in its list of sources.

What that means for you, is that sharing your content on social media can potentially get you featured as well.

Perplexity Focus Mode

Perplexity’s Focus Mode allows users to narrow down their search to specific sources.

Options include:

• All
• Social
• Video
• Writing
• Academic
• Math 

Focus is also known as “Sources” so if you don’t see the Focus button, look under Sources.

So, now that we better understand Perplexity’s unique features and their implications, it’s time to use this knowledge to develop Perplexity SEO strategies for your website. Let’s roll!

10 Perplexity AI SEO Strategies

Perplexity shares similarities with traditional search engines, but it also has a unique approach to choosing sources. The following Perplexity AI SEO strategies, therefore, present a unique blend of traditional and unique-to-AI-engines SEO.  

1. Create Conversational and Intent-Centric Content

As mentioned, Perplexity prioritizes fresh content that directly answers user queries. 

So, the goal is to create content that matches the user's intent, provides clear and concise information, and is conversational and easy to read.

You can also optimize your existing content to ensure it’s intent-centric, concise, and conversational. Also, updating your content will refresh it, which is something Perplexity values.

With Perplexity (and other AI-powered search engines), you’ll need to go beyond keywords and shape your content for both readers and search engines.

2. Write New and Update Old Content

As mentioned, Perplexity pulls information in real-time to answer a user's question. This way, Perplexity always prioritizes fresh versus older content.

So, your goal should be to produce new content in a timely fashion, especially if it’s connected with time-sensitive topics, and to regularly update old content that may be outdated. This will increase the chances of your content being featured in Perplexity and other AI-powered search engines.

By updating old content, we’re referring to updating it with any new information that has been revealed, found, or announced since you originally wrote your content.

3. Get Backlinks and Features In High-Authority Sites

Quality backlinks are important for boosting your site’s authority, and a stronger authority increases your chances of getting featured in both traditional and AI search engines.

Perplexity favors trustworthy sources, and we’ve been seeing that it ranks content from established publications higher.

Your goal is, then, to increase the chances of getting cited by securing features, guest posts, or mentions in well-known publications – such as Business Insider, news sites, and magazines.

If you need help getting mentions and backlinks in highly relevant and authoritative sources, contact us. We can help you secure a spot that moves the SEO needle and increases your site’s authority.

4. Use Social Media and Online Communities

Since Perplexity sources information and content from social media platforms like X and Reddit, one way to get featured is to build an active presence on these platforms.

Try to apply the same strategies you’d use for content in other places. For example:

• Comment on currently trending events to keep your content fresh;
• Update your old LinkedIn articles or Reddit posts to maintain relevance;
• Target long-tail keywords to boost your chances of getting featured.

You can also combine text content with images and videos. 

5. Establish Topical Authority

Perplexity prefers using sources that demonstrate topical authority.

With this in mind, you should write research-backed articles, include citations and references, and showcase deep knowledge in your niche.

Also, don't switch lanes too often. Stick to the one topic you know the best and obsess about it. Become associated with it online.

6. Improve Content Structure

While sourcing images and videos isn’t Perplexity’s strong suit, it’s something you shouldn’t overlook.

Including multimedia in your content improves readability and gives search engines one more way to find you. 

To boost your chances of getting featured, describe your images using alt text and use descriptive file names – not IMG9171810.jpg, but rather Cat-on-a-Surfboard.jpg. 

7. Target Long-Tail Keywords From Perplexity’s Relevant Feature

As mentioned, Perplexity almost always features a “Relevant” section (also known as People also ask) below its initial answers to questions.

This section contains additional questions related to the main topic or the original query. You can click on any of these questions to get answers. 

But there’s also an SEO reason why you should pay attention to these questions. 

Specifically, they’re good candidates to target with your content. 

These questions are essentially long-tail keywords that typically are easier to rank for in both search and AI engines. The competition for long-tail keywords (like how much do backlinks cost) is much lower than for short queries (like link building), giving you better chances of standing out.

8. Optimize for Perplexity’s Focus Mode

Perplexity’s Focus mode features earlier-mentioned content categories that help users refine their search.

Knowing this, you can optimize your content for a specific focus mode to signal Perplexity that your content fits a particular category. The most common modes (categories) include academic and writing.

So, you can cite sources, provide detailed research, or offer actionable insights in your content to increase the chance of gaining exposure on Perplexity.

9. Add Internal Links

Internal links might not get as much attention as backlinks, but they’re just as important—especially if you want platforms like Perplexity to recognize your content.

Linking between related pages helps organize your site and shows search engines how your content fits together. It creates a clear path for both users and algorithms to follow.

By improving your internal linking, you’ll make your site easier to navigate, keep visitors around longer, and increase your chances of being sourced by Perplexity.

10. Use Expert Quotes and Insights

Perplexity values high-quality content that demonstrates real topical authority. 

And that means going beyond surface-level info.

One of the best ways to do that? Add expert commentary, industry insights, interviews, or relevant quotes. These show that your content isn’t just recycled or generic, but informed by real-world experience and perspective.

Even if you don’t have direct access to thought leaders, you can:

• Summarize points from recent reports or whitepapers
• Quote interviews from trusted sources (with attribution)
• Pull stats or insights from credible industry publications
  

This doesn’t just give you visibility on platforms like Perplexity, but also builds trust with your audience. People are likelier to engage with and share content that feels credible and up-to-date.

Can You Also Use Perplexity for SEO?

Yes, you can definitely use Perplexity for SEO. 

Sure, your main goal might be to get your content featured as a source on Perplexity. But beyond that, you can use it to inspire smarter content, spot outreach opportunities, and stay ahead of trends. Here’s how:

• Find high-authority websites to reach out to. – Perplexity often cites the same trustworthy sources over and over. Use it to spot which domains are showing up in your niche and prioritize those in your link-building strategy.
  
  
• Discover trending questions and content gaps. –  Pay attention to the “People Also Ask” and follow-up questions Perplexity suggests. These show what users are curious about—and give you ideas for long-tail keywords and content angles to explore.
  
  
• Analyze what kind of content competitors get cited for. – Plug in your competitors or industry leaders and see where they’re being mentioned. Are they being sourced for data-driven posts? How-to guides? Expert takes? Reverse-engineer what’s working.
  
  
• Refine your content strategy with Focus Mode. – Perplexity’s “Focus” feature lets users narrow results by type: writing, social, academic, video, etc. Explore different categories to see what type of content gets visibility, and shape your strategy accordingly.
  
  
• Bonus idea: Test your own content. – Ask Perplexity a question your content should answer, and see if you show up. If you don’t, check who does. How does their structure, tone, or authority differ from yours?
  
  

By using Perplexity as both a source of traffic and a research tool, you’re covering more ground.

Improve Your Chances of Getting Featured. Get High-Quality Backlinks!

Increase your chances of getting featured on Perplexity and ranking higher in traditional search engines. Get backlinks in high-authority publications!

We’ve helped thousands of our clients over the past decade to land 12k+ high-quality placements and secure backlinks from authority websites. We can help you do the same.

Book a meeting with our team or order your backlinks today. All backlinks come with a lifetime guarantee.