SEO certainly isn’t dead— but it is evolving. And as business executive, talent, and traveller search habits shift across platforms, your place brand’s strategy needs to evolve too.

With AI Overviews, social-first search, and generative AI chatbots on the rise, optimising content is no longer just about ranking links on Google (though that is still important)—it’s about showing up wherever your audience is doing their research.

For place marketers, that means embracing a strategic and cohesive multi-channel approach that aligns with how visitors, talent, and executives are exploring regions, destinations, and opportunities.

To show up in traditional search results, social searches and generative AI responses, you’ll need to understand the nuances between each platform and the signals they prioritise.

The good news? You don’t have to choose just one. With clear, well-structured content that follows best practices for both people and platforms, your messaging can reach audiences wherever they search.

1. Optimising for traditional search engines 

Search engines like Google and Bing are still the backbone of digital discovery. While AI Overviews and summaries offer quick answers, many users, especially business decision-makers and talent, are looking for more in-depth information during their location research.

These audiences often look beyond the AI-generated blurbs to explore detailed information, data-backed content, social proof, and trustworthy sources that help them make informed decisions about where to invest, relocate, or even plan their vacation.

For place marketers, this is your website’s chance to attract, engage and educate these audiences during critical phases in their decision journey.

Tips for ranking on traditional search:

• Conduct keyword research. This is a critical step for understanding what topics your audience is frequently searching for, and the terms they are using to find it. Once you have your keywords, create a keyword map assigning the target terms to relevant pages.
  
  
• Include long-tail keywords. Target more specific search terms like “relocating a business to Europe”, rather than broad one or two-word keywords. Also, include natural-language variants, such as ‘establishing an office in Europe’.
  
  
• Build topic authority, not just pages. Cluster your content around themes like business incentives, major industries, or living in your region. Link between them to help search bots crawl more of your site and better understand how the pages relate to each other.
  
  
• Optimise behind-the-scenes elements. Meta titles, descriptions, alt tags, and structured data all help search engines understand and rank your content more accurately, boosting visibility in both standard results and featured snippets.
  
  
• Don’t overlook technical and off-page SEO. A fast, mobile-friendly site with strong backlinks and clean site architecture helps search engines crawl, index, and rank your content more effectively.
  
  
• Write for humans, optimised for bots. Clarity wins. Use formatting (bullets, tables, images) to improve scanability and comprehension.
  
  

Pro Tip: Refresh older content. Google rewards recency, especially for dynamic topics like job growth stats or new development projects.

2. Optimising for generative AI chatbots

More audiences are turning to generative AI to plan travel, research destinations, explore expansion opportunities, and compare quality of life in various regions.

To increase visibility in these tools, place marketers need to create content that AI can easily understand, trust, and summarise.

While chatbots likely won’t use your word-for-word content in its responses, they do pull from high-quality, well-structured sources to generate their answers, and often include links to those sources. Your goal is to be one of these resources.

Tips for influencing generative AI responses: 

• Research the questions your audience is asking. Use keyword tools, search forums, and AI platforms to identify common queries, then create content that clearly answers those questions in natural, conversational language.
  
  
• Use clear formatting to help AI understand your content. Structuring information with bullet points, subheadings, and short paragraphs makes it easier for AI tools to interpret, summarize, and surface your content in responses.
  
  
• Use clear, simple language and direct statements. Generative AI tools are more likely to pull from content that’s easy to understand, fact-based, and to the point—so prioritize clarity to boost your chances of being included in AI-generated responses.
  
  
• Cite data and link to credible sources. Government data, partner websites, and trustworthy news outlets improve your perceived authority.
  
  
• Prioritise site quality and usability. Broken links, outdated content, or confusing navigation can reduce your chances of being cited by AI tools or included in generative responses.
  
  

Pro Tip: Search your own city, country or region in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and see what comes up. Then create content on your website or through guest blogs that fills in the gaps or shares more of your key messages.

3. Optimising for search on social platforms

Search isn’t just happening on search engines or AI. Travellers, talent, and entrepreneurs are searching for inspiration and insight on destinations directly on platforms like TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, and Instagram.

Especially for tourism and talent attraction, social-first search is booming. In fact, according to Skift, social media platforms are now the most influential source of travel inspiration.

Tips for optimising social content:

• Do keyword research for social platforms to identify top searched topics and terms. Explore tools like TikTok’s search bar, Instagram’s suggested hashtags, as well as utilising relevant keywords you’re targeting for search engines optimisation
  
  
• Use searchable captions and hashtags. Optimise your captions, description text and hashtags for the keywords you’re targeting.
  
  
• Create content that drives engagement. Likes, shares, comments, and saves signal relevance to social algorithms, which can help it spread further and appear higher on searches. So focus on content that sparks interaction, not just impressions.
  
  
• Engage in comments and community threads. On platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn, this builds authority and drives visibility to your profile or page.
  
  
• Use location tags and keywords in profiles. Both matter for platform-level search and algorithm-based discovery.
  
  

Pro Tip: Treat your social content like micro-SEO. Every caption, comment, and hashtag is a chance to get discovered. 

Turning strategy into impact

 The future of SEO for tourism, economic development and tourism is about meeting your audience wherever – and however – they’re searching.

By creating strategic, well-optimised, and clearly structured content, place marketers can help shape perceptions, influence the online narrative around their region, and drive meaningful digital growth that leads to measurable economic impact.

Want to improve your place brand’s SEO? Get in touch! 

Brianna Vetrano is a digital place marketing consultant helping place brands engage executives, visitors, and talent across key stages of their decision-making journeys. Over the last decade, she’s partnered with more than 85 IPAs, DMOs, EDOs, and industry organizations to elevate their digital presence and drive meaningful results that matter in place marketing.

Specializing in SEO, paid media, and digital analytics, she offers flexible support to help place teams maximize their resources, attract niche audiences and showcase impact. Learn more about Brianna and get in touch at vetranodigital.com.