5 Emerging AI SEO Topics No One Is Talking About (Yet)

AI SEO is evolving fast. While schema markup and Q&A optimization remain the foundation, the next wave will reward brands that anticipate what’s coming. Forward-looking teams are already piloting strategies like agentic optimization, AI crawler governance, multimodal readiness, brand safety guardrails, and site-side retrieval.

Below are five under-discussed topics your marketing team should prioritize in 2025–2026 to stay ahead by 2027–2030.

AAIO: Agentic AI Optimization

What it is: Optimizing for AI assistants that don’t just answer questions but perform actions. For instance, AI Mode flows are starting to book tables and soon tickets. Today, it narrows options and passes links; tomorrow, it will close the loop.

What to do:

• Publish Offer, Service, and Reservation schema with real availability where possible.
• Add “How to book” or “How it works” blocks with clear steps and cancellation policies.
• Keep location and business hours structured and updated.
• Prioritize CRO: short forms, instant quotes, and call scheduling.

AI Crawler Governance (Robots.txt for Models)

What it is: A policy for allowing or disallowing AI crawlers (like GPTBot or Google-Extended) from training on your content. OpenAI documents how to manage GPTBot access, while Google provides Google-Extended controls for generative use.

Why it matters:

• Legal and brand considerations may demand content licensing choices.
• Many publishers block AI bots; others partner or selectively allow.

Quick start:

• Decide policy per section (allow blogs, block gated content).
• Maintain a robots.txt register; audit changes quarterly.
• Learn how it aligns with AI visibility optimization services.

Multimodal Readiness (Text + Image + Audio + Video)

What it is: AI experiences are now multimodal analyzing PDFs, images, and even video. In 2025, Search Live demos showed AI Mode summarizing PDFs and explaining video content.

What to do:

• Add alt text with entities and caption videos with timestamps.
• Provide transcripts for webinars and podcasts.
• Use Dataset schema for referenced numbers so facts are reusable.
• Align content clusters with programmatic SEO for scalable multimedia coverage.

Site-Side Retrieval That Shapes Discovery

What it is: Retrieval-augmented experiences (RAG) on your site like product finders or searchable knowledge bases that educate users and signal entity connections to AI bots.

Why it matters:

• Visitors who get instant answers stay longer and convert more.
• Structured retrieval can influence how external AIs interpret your entity graph.

Action:

• Build a knowledge base with Q&A formatting and FAQPage schema
• Interlink answers to pillar blogs like Semantic SEO and relevant service pages.
• Explore Answer Engine Optimization for alignment with AI assistants.

Brand Safety and LLM Guardrails

What it is: Protecting your brand as AI tools synthesize from multiple sources. Outdated or biased content can lead to misrepresentation. Studies show AI hallucinations remain a risk even in strong tools.

Action:

• Create a quarterly “Facts We Stand Behind” page with versioning and Dataset schema.
• Keep pricing ranges, SLAs, and capabilities updated.
• Monitor citations in Perplexity and other AI search engines; dispute inaccuracies if needed.

Key Takeaways

• Agentic optimization is coming fast so prepare with Offers, Service, and Reservation schema
• Decide your AI crawler policy now using GPTBot and Google-Extended controls
• Get multimodal-ready with transcripts, captions, and Dataset schema.
• Build site-side retrieval hubs that improve discovery and align with SEO packages in Delhi for structured growth
• Guard your brand in LLMs by maintaining fresh, authoritative facts.

About the Author (Subhash Jain)
Subhash Jain leads strategy at Samyak Online. He works at the frontier of GEO, LLM optimization, and agentic AI helping teams structure content and data to be selected, not just cited.

Want a roadmap to pilot these five areas? Start with Semantic SEO Services and Schema Services, then connect with our CRO team to make every agent-driven visit count.