I think everyone is building the wrong AI SEO product

Over the last few months, I've noticed a pattern.

Many new SEO startups are focused on AI visibility. They build AI mention trackers, brand monitoring tools, or community tracking.

I understand why. As AI search grows, everyone wants to know where their brand is showing up. But I think that's solving the wrong problem.

The real question is:

Why do Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity choose your website in the first place?

My bet is simple. They don't pick a site because it has the most mentions. They pick sites that know a topic really well.

Google has been moving in this direction for years. It no longer looks only at keywords. It tries to understand entities, relationships, search intent, and how well a website covers a topic.

If someone searches for "Webflow SEO" Google isn't only looking for a page with those words.

It wants to know if the website is actually an authority on Webflow SEO.

That is where topic clusters help.

Instead of publishing random blog posts, you cover a topic from every angle. You answer beginner questions, advanced questions, comparisons, alternatives, use cases, and common problems.

This creates strong topical coverage. It also makes internal linking much easier. Every article naturally connects to related articles.

Search engines can understand how your content fits together and which pages matter the most.

I think this is also good for AI search. LLMs need reliable sources that explain a topic well. A website with deep coverage is much more useful than one with a few isolated articles.

That's why I decided to build Hovers around topic clusters instead of AI mention tracking. The goal is to automate the whole process.

• Find the topic.

• Build the cluster.

• Write the articles.

• Create internal links.

• Find content gaps from Google Search Console.

• Keep expanding as the website grows.

Maybe I'm wrong. But my bet is that the future of SEO and AI search belongs to websites that teach a topic better than everyone else, not the ones with the most AI mentions.

I'd love to hear what others think.