The Challenge
Since 2022, Graphite and Webflow have partnered to drive SEO growth, achieving 3M nonbrand clicks and a 2.5x ROI in 2024.
In Q1 2025, both teams saw an exciting opportunity to take advantage of a new channel, LLMs, to continue driving conversions and revenue through AEO.
At the time, Graphite was seeing increases of ~300% of all client traffic coming from ChatGPT, and Webflow was seeing 4% of signups coming from LLMs.
AEO was still a black box for marketers, so Webflow and Graphite set out to build an AEO roadmap of experiments to identify high-impact strategies that they could repeat and scale to win in AI search.
The Solution
What Webflow and Graphite did know was that LLM answers were heavily influenced by citations and that there were two ways to appear in the list of citations in AI chat - onsite (i.e. Webflow’s website) or offsite (i.e. organic influencer mentions, YouTube and Reddit).
Graphite’s AI team analyzed citations at scale and found that Reddit was a top-five source for AEO questions, appearing in 10% of ChatGPT citations. YouTube was also a major source, cited in 5% of ChatGPT responses and 32% of Perplexity responses.
The next step was to identify what onsite and offsite content the Webflow team could create and/or optimize to increase both share of voice and conversions from LLMs.
Onsite Content
- Webflow’s template pages (highest converting page type)
- Webflow’s blog pages
Offsite Content
- Affiliate publications
- Webflow’s Youtube
- Webflow’s Reddit
- Influencer YouTube Channels
The Results
Webflow was able to drive:
- 94% share of voice growth from LLMs
- 2x the amount of sign-ups coming from LLMs (increase from 4% to 8%)
- 24% Signup CVR (vs. 4% for non-brand SEO )
The Strategy
The strategies that drove real results:
AEO Optimizations for Blog Pages
To boost ChatGPT recommendations of Webflow as the top CMS for popular app integrations, the teams published a blog series answering AEO-style questions.
Example: What is the best CMS for in-house teams that use ReviewsJet?
Result:
- Before: 38% SoV
- After: 100% SoV
After three weeks of publishing, SoV increased for 70% of questions.
AEO Optimization of Template Pages
Templates are one of Webflow’s highest-converting page types, so optimizing them for LLMs was a clear next step. Both teams conducted AI question-and-answer research relevant to template pages (like “real estate website templates”) and added unique above-the-fold copy optimized for answer engines.
Example: Real Estate Website Templates
Results: This change increased LLM signups by 485% QoQ
- Q1 168 signups
- Q2 983 signups
Transparent, Value-focused Reddit Strategy
Graphite and Webflow’s cross-functional team launched a Reddit optimization strategy based on transparent, value-focused communication.
They analyzed citations across 100 priority head, midtail, and longtail queries and built a monitoring workflow to identify relevant threads and comments.
Table of Contents for Answer Engine Visibility
A table of contents was added to help answer engines identify and serve the most relevant section quickly, enhancing chances of being selected for direct answers. The Table of Contents improves navigability, clarifies topical hierarchy, and aligns with search intent.
Example: Landing pages vs. websites.
Results:
- 23% growth in clicks in over 4 weeks after implementation.
- 60% growth in AI visits in over 4 weeks after implementation.
Headers as Questions
The teams reformatted blog page headers into question-based phrasing to help answer engines match content with real user intent.
Example: 12 useful AI design tools for web designers:
- What are AI design tools and how do they work?
- What are the advantages of using AI-powered design tools?
- What are the limitations of AI in web design?
- Which AI tools are most useful for web designers?
Results: 58% growth in AI visits in over 4 weeks after implementation.
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By the Numbers
Conclusion
- LLMs can drive brand visibility and increase conversions.
- AI Chat users can be higher intent (6x conversion rate of SEO) due to longtail user behavior / conversational element.
- SEO and AEO have a lot of similarities - good, useful content still wins.
