SEO & AEO Strategist · Author · AI Visibility Specialist

How Brands Earn Citations and Trust in AI Search

I help brands become discoverable in AI-driven search.

Not just ranking in Google—but being selected, cited, and trusted by AI systems.

For 12+ years, I've built the technical and content architecture behind discovery. Today, that means aligning your site with how LLMs retrieve and rank information.

Book a Strategy Call Request an AI Visibility Audit
Services

What I Help With

AI Visibility Audits

Are you being cited in LLMs? I evaluate how AI systems retrieve and surface your brand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google SGE.

Content & Entity Architecture

Built for retrieval, not just ranking. Structured content systems that make your information the most trustworthy, quotable source for AI systems.

SEO → GEO Transformation

Modernizing legacy search strategies for the generative era. Moving your program from keyword optimization to AI-era authority building.

Technical SEO at Scale

Enterprise systems, not surface fixes. Deep technical audits, crawl optimization, and architecture work built for large, complex site ecosystems.

0%

YoY Organic Growth

0%

LLM Citation Rate Increase

0+

Years of Search Experience

0K+

Enterprise Pages Optimized

LeighAnne Turner with her K9 partner Piper
Louisville, KY
B.S. Communications, Campbellsville University
K9 SAR & Wilderness First Responder
About

Strategist, Author,
& Systems Thinker

I turn technical complexity into business impact. My approach—grounded in deep technical SEO audits and strategic content architecture—led to my book, Digital Discovery Optimization: How Brands Earn Citations and Trust in AI Search, which defines how brands remain discoverable in an AI-driven ecosystem.

I actively test how AI systems retrieve and cite content across platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. My work is grounded in how these systems actually behave.

Outside of search, I apply the same systems-thinking to Search and Rescue. As a licensed Wilderness First Responder and K9 SAR volunteer, I locate missing persons and provide emergency care in remote environments—training my German Shorthaired Pointer, Piper, in scent detection for wilderness, urban, and disaster response. Whether I'm optimizing 27,000 pages of enterprise code or navigating a ridgeline, the work is the same: solving complex problems under pressure.

"LeighAnne is a great employee. Point her in the right direction, and she'll produce great work for you with very little oversight. If she doesn't know how to do it at first, she'll figure it out before your next sync. Highly recommend working with her!"
— Edward Unthank, Etumos
"I have known LeighAnne for 10 years. We have worked together on some occasions. She is a hard, talented worker. She is very passionate and dedicated to her career."
— Michelle Del Valle-Clark
Framework

Digital Discovery Optimization

DDO is the practice of designing content and signals so humans and AI systems can find, understand, trust, and recommend your information across search engines, AI assistants, and recommendation platforms.

Approach Primary Goal Optimizes For
SEO Rank pages in search results Crawlability, relevance, authority, UX
AEO Be selected as the answer Direct answers, structure, clarity, schema
GEO Be cited in generative outputs Factual authority, consistency, quotable sections
DDO Win discovery across all systems Entity clarity + trust + retrieval readiness across channels

Entity Clarity

Consistent descriptions of who you are, what you do, and how you're connected—across every surface.

Retrieval-Friendly Structure

Clean headings, tight definitions, and sections that can be quoted directly by AI systems.

Factual Authority

Verifiable claims, transparent sources, and consistent cross-platform signals that build machine trust.

Machine Readability

Schema markup, accessible HTML, and clean information architecture optimized for how AI reads.

"The atomic unit of the web is no longer the link—it is the fact. DDO teaches you how to own it." — LeighAnne Turner, Digital Discovery Optimization

Read the full DDO definition and FAQ →

Digital Discovery Optimization book by LeighAnne Turner, subtitled How Brands Earn Citations and Trust in AI Search
Published Work

Digital Discovery Optimization

How Brands Earn Citations and Trust in AI Search

The definitive guide to the new era of information retrieval. Built for SEOs, content strategists, and digital leaders ready to transition from chasing traffic to architecting influence.

The DDO Framework Integrating SEO, AEO, and GEO into a unified discovery strategy
Optimizing for RAG Writing for the LLM that decides if your content is worth citing
The Trust Wars Defending your brand against hallucination and synthetic data loops
New Metrics for Success Moving beyond CTR to measure AI Visibility and Factual Density
Get the Book on Amazon
Perspective

How I Think About Search Now

Search is no longer just ranking—it's retrieval

Authority comes from consistency, not just links

Content must be structured for machines and humans

Visibility now includes AI systems, not just SERPs

Work

The Work: Case Studies

How I've solved complex problems, at scale, across different industries.

Enterprise 27,000+ Pages ~50% YoY Organic Growth

The Challenge

An enterprise broadcast network inherited a massive ecosystem: 27,000+ Drupal pages, multi-year traffic decline, crawl budget hemorrhaging, and deep technical debt. Duplicate content, orphaned pages, and infrastructure chaos—with no map of the architecture.

The Strategy

Started with diagnosis, not action. Conducted a comprehensive technical audit identifying 6,400+ duplicate and orphaned URLs. Mapped the entire site structure, built a prioritization framework, then systematically consolidated through redirects and crawl optimization. Built GA4 event tracking for donation flows so leadership could see organic search's contribution to revenue.

The Results

Recovered 35% of crawl budget and grew organic sessions ~50% year over year. Resolved 6,400+ duplicate and orphaned URLs and brought 96,000+ pages under automated SEO governance in Drupal. FAQ schema strategy lifted SERP feature visibility 23%. LCP improved 38%; CLS failures dropped from 41% to under 8%. Established governance playbooks the organization still uses.

What This Taught Me

Enterprise-scale SEO requires both technical depth and change management. The biggest wins come from finding what's broken in the infrastructure. And when you connect SEO to business outcomes—like donation revenue—leadership starts paying attention.

What I'd Do Differently

I would have built the GA4 donation-revenue attribution in month one. Once leadership could see organic search's contribution to revenue, development prioritization accelerated. Establishing that connection earlier would likely have moved the redirect and architecture work forward by several months.

I'd also pair remediation with governance from day one. Consolidating 6,400+ duplicate URLs and resolving thousands of orphaned pages addressed the existing debt, but without publishing standards and clear ownership, that debt starts accumulating again immediately. The governance playbooks came later; they should have shipped with the audit.

Read the full case study →

AEO / GEO 40% LLM Citation Lift, Priority Query Set 30%+ Growth in 6 Months

The Challenge

An AdTech SaaS company needed organic growth in a competitive space. But beyond Google rankings, there was a larger problem: most brands aren't optimizing for how AI actually cites content. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google SGE were reshaping discoverability with no existing playbook.

The Strategy

Built the company's first integrated SEO and AEO program from scratch. Built a monitoring framework tracking content surfacing across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google SGE. Tested entity schema, published 25+ long-form articles, implemented FAQ schema, and built GA4 attribution aligned to go-to-market priorities.

The Results

30%+ organic growth within six months. Lifted LLM citation rate 40% across a stable priority query set in ~3.5 months through systematic schema and entity optimization. Built the AEO measurement framework in Profound, plus the content playbooks the program still runs on.

What This Taught Me

The future of SEO is about making your content the most discoverable across all search paradigms—traditional engines, AI answer systems, and human trust. Organizations that understand this now will dominate visibility later.

What I'd Do Differently

I'd establish a longer pre-launch citation baseline. We began monitoring LLM citations around the same time content production started, so the 40% increase is real, but the attribution is noisier than I'd prefer. Sixty to ninety days of baseline data would have created a cleaner before-and-after comparison and made the results more defensible.

The competitor citation analysis also needed to be more systematic. I compared five to seven cited pages around each pillar, using Claude to identify shared coverage and missing information, then researched and filled the gaps independently. The missing step was reverse-engineering each winning page on its own: how it framed the answer, structured its evidence, connected relevant entities, and made its claims easy to extract.

That analysis would probably have pushed us toward fewer, deeper pieces earlier. Instead, we learned through a full production cycle that citation gains were concentrated in a smaller group of highly structured, entity-anchored articles.

Read the full case study →

B2B Law 91% YoY Organic Growth DR 70+ Backlinks

The Challenge

Managing concurrent B2B client portfolios across different competitive landscapes, different ICPs, different technical infrastructure. Scaling without losing customization.

The Strategy

Built repeatable diagnostic frameworks adaptable to each client. Conducted technical audits, executed intent-aligned keyword research, developed content strategies balancing quick wins with long-term authority. Partnered on digital PR to earn DR 70+ backlinks. Designed GA4 dashboards proving SEO's revenue contribution.

The Results

Delivered 91% organic traffic growth for a personal injury law firm in the Southwest, with 77% more unique visitors and priority terms moving from page 6 to page 1 in a year. Grew local lead volume 27% through Google Business Profile and location-page strategy. Earned DR 70+ backlinks through digital PR and outreach.

What This Taught Me

Agency work teaches rigor. When you're accountable to multiple clients, you learn to prioritize ruthlessly, communicate clearly, and deliver consistently. Pattern recognition develops fast—what works in one industry often transfers, but the application has to be thoughtful.

What I'd Do Differently

I'd standardize the reporting infrastructure from day one instead of building entirely custom GA4 dashboards for each client. The customization felt like service; in practice, it created overhead. A shared reporting framework with client-specific views would have returned hours each week to analysis and strategy.

The other change: a stricter relevance threshold for link acquisition, set earlier. Some DR 70+ links produced little movement because topical and audience alignment mattered more than raw domain authority. The links that influenced rankings came from sites serving an audience closely related to the client's. Now I'd prioritize that alignment first, then evaluate authority.

Read the full case study →

Thought Leadership

Featured Writing

Event Marketing

The Ultimate Guide to Event Marketing: Strategies for Selling Out Shows

Stop guessing and start filling seats with data-driven frameworks designed to eliminate the cost of empty inventory.

Read the full article
Film & TV

The Ultimate Guide to Film and TV Marketing

A deep dive into modern film marketing—from building authentic communities to data-driven audience targeting and intent-based strategy.

Read the full article
SEO Strategy

Paid Search and SEO: Why You Need Both

How aligned systems create compounding visibility advantages that consistently outperform siloed marketing approaches.

Read the full article
Book

Digital Discovery Optimization: How Brands Earn Citations and Trust in AI Search

The definitive guide to the new era of information retrieval optimization—where ranking gives way to retrieval, and links give way to facts.

Get the book
Stack

The Toolkit

The tools, platforms, and frameworks I use to build, measure, and scale organic search programs.

SEO & Analytics

  • Google Analytics (GA4)
  • Google Search Console
  • Screaming Frog
  • Ahrefs
  • SEMrush
  • Looker Studio

GEO & AI Tools

  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • Cursor
  • DeepSeek
  • n8n Automation
  • Athena HQ
  • Profound
  • LLM Monitoring Frameworks

CMS & Platforms

  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • HubSpot
  • Shopify

Design & Collaboration

  • Figma
  • Canva
  • Photoshop
  • InDesign
  • Jira
  • Slack

Specializations

  • Technical SEO Audits
  • Core Web Vitals
  • Schema Markup
  • AEO/GEO Strategy
  • Attribution Modeling
  • Content Architecture
Get in Touch

Let's Talk

Whether you're looking to hire, collaborate, discuss strategy, or explore an AI Visibility Audit—I'm open to conversations with people who care about real impact.

Send an Email Connect on LinkedIn leighannewrites.com Get the Book
Please enter your full name.
This field is required.
What are you reaching out about?
Select the reason for your message.
This field is required.
Share the details of your message.
This field is required.
This field is required.