More and more people are "searching" on generative AI (gen AI) solutions like SearchGPT, Perplexity, and Claude instead of Google—forcing health brands to rethink how they capture visibility in search.
Google’s AI Overview (AIO) is also reshaping search, appearing in at least 15% of searches and cutting publisher traffic—making it even harder for health brands to get seen unless they change strategy.
Gen AI search engines prioritize content differently than traditional SEO, meaning what worked before won’t necessarily work now. Factors like speed and source authority are becoming even more critical for ranking in AI-driven search results.
In a world where gen AI optimization is SEO, health brands need a strategy to get ahead—and stay ahead—of competitors in AI search results.
Gen AI Search Is Upending The SEO Playbook
Content is still king—but staying on the throne just got tougher.
More and more people (myself included!) are "searching" on gen AI solutions like SearchGPT instead of Google. According to a new study, over a quarter of Americans (27%) are ditching traditional search engines in favor of AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
Even the Wall Street Journal published a story with the headline “Googling is for Old People.” Yikes. 😬
But hold your horses—because in May 2024, Google also rolled out AI Overview (AIO), and it’s now the #1 result on a LOT of searches. (While cutting publisher traffic and getting slammed by news publishers along the way.) AIO is supposed to appear on around 15% of searches, but I’m betting it’s more.
Is this shift toward generative AI SEO good for consumers? Probably—faster answers, more conversational responses, and less sifting through junk. Is it good for publishers? IDKID. What’s clear is the “rich will get richer” as more visibility goes to fewer sources. 💸
So, to get rich, health brands need to get moving.
Why Gen AI Search Matters For Health Brands
Health marketers have always played the SEO game, but now? Gen AI optimization is SEO, and publishing high-quality, authoritative content has never mattered more.
Displaying E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) is now non-negotiable, especially in YMYL (“Your Money, Your Life”) industries like health care, where both the stakes and competition are higher than ever. The opportunity to win is bigger—but so is the fight for visibility.
A recent survey found over half of consumers believe AI-powered search makes it easier to find products and services, creating a major opportunity for health brands to gain visibility in AI search engines. And—it’s converting better. According to Magic Space SEO, AI-cited content drives higher conversions, with AI referrals increasing rates by 30-40% over traditional search.
The major search engines to woo are Open AI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Perplexity. (While still early, some data suggests SearchGPT is supposedly driving 4x more referrals than both.)
Where do AI tools get their search results?
ChatGPT: Uses "SearchGPT" (and prioritizes Bing)
Claude: Uses Anthropic’s data and licensed datasets.
Google Gemini: Sources up-to-date facts via Google Search
Grok: Searches both the web and Twitter/X for insights
Microsoft Copilot: Pulls new data from Bing search
Perplexity AI: Conducts real-time web searches for each query
How do health brands rank in AI overviews? By aligning more closely with a shift in search behavior.
According to an analysis by Semrush, 70% of ChatGPT queries show a new kind of search intent. People aren’t just looking for direct answers—they’re problem-solving, brainstorming, and exploring ideas that don’t fit traditional search categories, requiring brands to think beyond conventional search queries.
So, the brands that adapt their healthcare content strategy fastest will be the ones AI prioritizes first.
Why We’re Betting on Gen AI Search (And You Should Too)
Gen AI search is only going to get bigger. Gartner is already predicting that AI assistants will handle nearly one-third of all search queries by 2026. My bet is it’ll be more—and faster. So, at Healthyish Content, we’re leading the charge on embracing gen AI search.
Since 2021, we've partnered with over 20 health brands, experimenting at scale on every part of content marketing… and now, in particular, to determine what impacts AI-driven search. From emerging startups like Midi Health and NOCD to growing health brands like GoodRx and Ro Health, we've tested, optimized, and adapted in real-time to refine content that achieves top search rankings—and maintains them.
These brands now consistently rank in Google’s AIO and see growing traffic from ChatGPT. Ro Health alone ranks for 2,300 keywords in Google’s AIO—and counting.
Here’s how we do things. Steal away! 😏️
8 Ways To Optimize Health Content For Gen AI Search
To get your brand seen in AI search, start by publishing quality content with unique insights, proprietary data, and compelling narratives—all while following SEO best practices. That’s the baseline. You still need to rank on page one of Google for your content to appear in AI Overviews, so foundations matter.
As Healthyish Content SEO Partner Ken Roberts puts it, “Ranking on page one gets you a ticket to the show—it gets you in the door. You need to do everything else to get to the front of the stage.”
From there, these eight strategies are what we’ve used to help health brands move to the front—and dominate AI search SEO.
Publish Accurate, Expert-Validated Content
AI favors accurate content. Publishing "correct factual information" gives you the best chance of visibility, and you can credibility and boost visibility by sourcing and including expert approvers. For YMYL content, expert validation isn’t optional—it’s a must. No content in health should go live without it.
Include experts with degrees and relevant backgrounds (the fancier and the more, the better) and create a dedicated profile page for each with their title, headshot, and background (plus external links to validate that background) to reinforce their credibility.
Also, my anecdotal experience shows two expert approvals almost always perform better than one.
Your move:
🔥 Include expert approvals in your health content(preferably more than one).
🔥 Build out profile pages for your experts.
Include Authoritative Links & Relevant Entities
ChatGPT favors content that links to top-tier sources like medical journals—so no dinky linkouts allowed. 🙅🏻♂️Less authoritative or questionable sites signal poor-quality content. (After all, you are the company you keep.)
Another (relatively new) signal that seems to matter? Mentioning all relevant places, organizations, and people in your content.
For example, if you’re writing an article on heart disease prevention, you’ll want to mention key organizations like the American Heart Association (AHA), landmark studies like the Framingham Heart Study, and leading experts like Dr. Martha Gulati (women’s heart health) and Dr. Eric Topol (cardiovascular innovation).
If you want to rank locally, you want to include the neighborhoods, landmarks, businesses, people, and entities in that city, too. Show you know your stuff by covering all the content topics and all the relevant things associated with the topic.
With enough time and resources, you could take it further by involving these entities directly in the article’s creation to maximize your chances of winning backlinks. 🙌 (The dream is to build a marketing plan into every article.)
Your move:
🔥 Cite authoritative sources with reasonably high domain authority (no exceptions).
🔥 Include all relevant entities in your content—including article briefs.
🔥 Create and stick to rules and restrictions around where you link to.
Engage Readers With High-Impact Visuals
Engagement on article pages matters. The more engagement in content, the stronger the signal that people find the content valuable. (I've always believed time on page is a metric that really counts in the algorithm.)
Boost engagement by adding:
Branded headers
Images and graphics (think infographics)
Polls, surveys, and quizzes
Relevant calculators and tools
Social embeds from TikTok, Instagram, X, you name it
Basically, think any visuals that keep users interacting longer.
But skip stock photography. It screams generic, and people (and Google) know better. Google favors original content, and unindexed images can help improve a page's ranking (even if it's stagnant). (Hint: A quick Google reverse image search can show you if an image is already indexed).
Your move:
🔥 Include original and engaging visual elements in your content.
Make Your Content More Conversational
Approachable content wins—even truer when gen AI search (which, you know, answers in the form of conversation) is in play. Health brands need to:
Double down on brand voice
Add personality, and
Break down dense concepts the way a friend would
That means ditching jargon, cutting complex terminology, and adding clarity so content actually resonates with the people reading it. It alsoooo means avoiding the temptation to stuff your article with keywords (though “semantic optimization” still matters).
For example, we’ve noticed certain search queries are more likely to trigger brand results. Using “best” in your content can improve visibility. It makes sense, TBH. Like asking friends for recommendations, we now turn to ChatGPT.
Case and point: This example from GoodRx (helped them launch GoodRx Health) 👇
Using an “If/Then” structure can also help here (and we see AI loving when you follow structured logic in your content). Think: “If you have symptom X, do Y.”
TBH, I think this is a good thing. (Who wants to sift through complicated answers when you can get insights that sound like they're coming straight from your BFF, Alex?)
Your move:
🔥 Update your style guides to emphasize a more conversational tone.
🔥 Explain new terms and industry references in plain language, making sure everything feels human and natural.
🔥 Use if/then logic to appeal to AI search engines.
Increase Update Velocity And Re-Publish Content
Recency matters more than ever. Gen AI prioritizes the freshest, most up-to-date content. That means finding smart ways to refresh and re-publish content regularly.
But that does NOT mean publishing a higher volume of content. Please don’t. You need no more than 3-5 new articles per month. Mediocre content drags the rest down. The only reason to do more is if you can do it without compromising on quality. Our take? Stick to publishing the best content, and then continue improving it by updating it every six months.
Your move:
🔥 Update your content frequently—at least every six months.
🔥 Re-publish content for any and every reason—even if you only make light changes.
Optimize For Speed and Structure
ChatGPT prioritizes content that’s easy to crawl and quick to load—so a clean, organized site structure and fast speeds will help your content get seen.
Max out schema markup to give Google (and AI-driven search engines) the clearest signals about your content. You can use this Google tool to spot any errors and validate data. (My guess is ChatGPT and others will roll out their versions soon.)
Lost and don't know how to do this? Believe it or not, you can use ChatGPT for that! Here's a prompt:
ChatGPT, I need to optimize my website for SearchGPT and AI-driven search. My goals are to improve page speed, clean up site structure for better crawlability, and maximize schema markup. Please analyze my current HTML and provide actionable recommendations, including specific code examples and best practices for schema implementation and site organization.
The more structured your content, the easier it is for an LLM to process. Use clear headings and subheadings to enhance readability.
Become Besties With Lists
Speaking of structure…I can’t emphasize the importance of using lists—whether that’s in the form of bullet points, FAQs, or a clear table of contents.
A whopping 78% of Google's AI Overviews contain lists, and anecdotally, so do many answers from ChatGPT. Adding bullet points (and lists in general) improves search visibility and scannability, making your content more likely to be pulled into AI search answers.
Meanwhile, having a bulleted table of contents or breadcrumb-style navigation signals the most important takeaways to gen AI and Google. Try and succinctly capture each section of your content in a conversational, short way.
Bonus: 🎉Bullet points also optimize your content for voice search, which is becoming a bigger deal, with 20.5% of people worldwide using it.
Your move:
🔥 Add short bulleted summaries to the top of every article AND to any long or major section. Think TL;DR.
🔥 End every article with key takeaways/a conclusion in bullet point form.
🔥 Consider adding a table of contents.
Go Bold Or Go Home
Haveeee you caught on yet? 👀 Bolding matters. Bold words and phrases grab readers’ attention, boost engagement, and make your content easier to scan. And yes, bolding also makes your writing feel more conversational. Plus, search engines pick up on bolded text, potentially using it as another signal.
Your move:
🔥 Start bolding all critical statements in each article.
🔥 I’d probably bold summaries/takeaways at the top and end of articles, too.
Final (and most critical) recommendation?
Invest In Super High-Quality Content
If you’re in health, you can’t afford to settle for mediocre content—your audience demands accurate, engaging, science-backed insights that build trust. And that’s exactly why Google AIO, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, Claude—you name it—prioritize that content.
In a gen AI search world, the better your content, the better your placement.
To stand out in a crowded internet, invest in publishing in quality content written by skilled writers, fact-checked by medical experts, and edited for clarity and credibility. When you do, you’ll drive traffic, conversions, and real growth—and hopefully, all the above helps you do it. (Track your progress with tools like AI SEO Tracker.)
And obviously, if you don’t want to do this all yourself, we’ve got an agency for that at Healthyish Content.
A Note On AI Generated Content
While AI tools can speed up content creation, they can’t replace the depth, nuance, and trust of high-quality, expert-reviewed health content.
AI-generated content often lacks medical accuracy, unique insights, and the critical human judgment needed for high-stakes topics like healthcare. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview prioritize authoritative content backed over mass-produced, generic AI copy—with Google actively sussing out and penalizing AI-generated content.
Avoid your content getting lost and give your health brand a competitive advantage by investing in super high-quality content.
The Takeaway
To wrap up, here’s a bulleted summary (sound familiar? 😆) to help you master gen AI search.
Shift your healthcare SEO strategy for gen AI: Health brands must adapt to how gen AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude prioritize content. Quality, authority, and structure matter more than ever in getting visibility and staying competitive.
Engage and build trust: Health brands aim beyond ranking by creating content that keeps readers engaged. High-impact visuals, expert-approved insights, interactive tools, and a conversational tone help drive deeper trust, longer time on the page, and stronger credibility in AI search results.
Be agile and optimize for visibility: Speed, content structure, schema markup, and regular updates will make or break your health content’s performance. Maintaining top-tier optimized content will give health brands the best chance to outpace competitors in AI-driven search.
Want an easy way to remember all of the things? Download this checklist to use the next time you’re creating AI-optimized content.
Your move. 😏
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Interested in getting your content seen by gen AI search engines—without having to do the heavy lifting? Get in touch to learn more about how Healthyish Content can help you increase visibility by writing the best health content on the internet for you.