How OUTRIGGER Pivoted Existing SEO Research into LLM Success

We helped OUTRIGGER leverage a strong SEO foundation to launch an SEO + AEO strategy that earned #1 positions in Google AI Overviews while simultaneously growing organic search visibility by 166%.

Industry
Hospitality & Travel
Period
Dec 2025 – Mar 2026
Services
SEO + AEO Strategy
Keywords Tracked
376
44
AI Overview Rankings
(from 1)
86%
Ranked #1 in
AI Overviews
166%
Organic Top 10
Growth
41,970
Monthly Search Volume
Captured via AI Overviews

The Challenge

Like most businesses, OUTRIGGER recognized the rising tide of LLM popularity and realized that their brand would need to find a way to be represented in AI search or forfeit an enormous opportunity to gain and maintain market share.

But with so much buzz about how to influence LLMs and so few proven methods, OUTRIGGER wasn't sure where to start.

To address this challenge, OUTRIGGER partnered with Tangible Value. We first conducted a thorough research project to determine tactics that were most likely to positively influence LLMs and then devised a software solution to deploy our most promising hypothesis.

The Approach

Tangible Value has worked with OUTRIGGER for over 5 years, so SEO research was thorough and organized. This was an invaluable body of market research that comprised nearly every way a possible OUTRIGGER customer would search.

To gracefully pivot this strong SEO foundation to an LLM / AEO strategy, a few things had to happen:

Step 1

Turn Keywords into Prompts

We had to turn our SEO keywords into prompts because that's how users interact with LLMs. Early research shows that users interact with LLMs with much longer, more detailed queries than they would when conducting a traditional Google search.

Step 2

Establish Baseline Visibility

One of Tangible Value's core tenets is to measure according to the scientific method — so that we know if our initiatives are working. To fulfill this, we would need to find a reliable way to measure how often LLMs surfaced OUTRIGGER's brand for each of our generated prompts.

Step 3

Generate & Launch LLM-Friendly Content

A main reason OUTRIGGER was not appearing for many LLM prompts was that their library of educational content was not deep enough. Simply put, users pose a wide variety of specific questions during their purchase journey and OUTRIGGER was not hosting content that addressed all or most of these questions. We also had to make sure that the content created was optimized for LLMs, which prefer simple, structured data.

The Solution

This was a significantly complicated set of requirements, which the Tangible Value team met by creating an AI-powered platform to guide our team and OUTRIGGER's team through the process.

Our 15+ years of deep SEO knowledge was blended with Claude AI to develop a methodology that would turn a carefully-organized set of SEO keywords into relevant prompts and then aid OUTRIGGER SMEs in creating accurate, helpful content that met the technical requirements of both SEO and GEO / LLMs.

We then partnered with both Profound and Gumshoe to track LLM visibility.

The combination of these three elements became the platform you can learn about here — and the results generated significant gains in SEO and LLM visibility in only a few months.

AI Overview Growth

Starting from a single AI Overview appearance in late December 2025, OUTRIGGER's visibility in Google's AI-generated answers grew steadily week over week, reaching 44 keywords by early March 2026.

AI Overview Rankings Over Time
Total AI Overviews
Ranked #1
50 40 30 20 10 0

Key insight: 86% of all AI Overview appearances were at position #1. When OUTRIGGER shows up in an AI Overview, they're almost always the top-cited source.

AI Overview Coverage by Destination

The strategy produced results across all of OUTRIGGER's key markets, with the strongest AI Overview presence in their APAC destinations and Hawaii properties.

10
Maldives
9
Fiji
9
Oahu / Waikiki
8
Mauritius
4
Maui
3
Kauai

Top AI Overview Keywords

These are the highest-volume keywords where OUTRIGGER now appears in Google's AI-generated answers — queries that represent travelers actively planning trips.

Keyword AI Overview Rank Monthly Volume
maldives vacation #1
14,800
best time to visit maldives #1
5,400
best time to go to maldives #1
3,600
best time to visit fiji #1
2,900
best time to go to fiji #1
2,400
things to do in maui with kids #1
1,600
best time to visit mauritius #1
1,300
best time to see maldives #1
1,000
fun things to do in maui #4
1,000
best time to go to mauritius #1
480

Showing top 10 of 44 AI Overview keywords by monthly search volume. Source: SEMrush Position Tracking, March 2026.

Organic Traffic Impact

The travel resource pages built for AEO didn't just earn AI Overview citations — they drove significant organic search traffic from Google. These pages went from near-zero to 350,000+ weekly impressions in under 10 weeks.

1.87M
Total Google
Impressions
4,430
Clicks to AEO
Content
350K+
Peak Weekly
Impressions
95
Countries
Reached
Weekly Google Impressions — Travel Resource Pages
Impressions
400K 320K 240K 160K 80K 0

Top Performing Pages

Page Clicks Impressions Avg. Position
Best Time to Visit Fiji 737 246,612 3.0
Kauai Resorts & Hotels Guide 570 234,290 10.7
Best Time to Visit Mauritius 437 143,487 4.2
Best Time to Visit Maldives 301 248,019 4.6
Things to Do in Kona Hawaii 219 75,389 9.5

Source: Google Search Console, Dec 8, 2025 – Mar 7, 2026. Filtered to /travel-resources pages on outrigger.com.

Key insight: Content built for AI citation also earned strong traditional search rankings. The top "best time to visit" pages achieved average positions of 3–5 in Google — meaning this content serves double duty, capturing both AI-generated and traditional organic traffic.

Key Wins

  • From invisible to dominant: Grew from 1 to 44 AI Overview appearances in just 10 weeks — with 38 of those at the #1 position
  • High-value query ownership: Now the #1 AI Overview source for "maldives vacation" (14,800 monthly searches) and "best time to visit maldives" (5,400 monthly searches)
  • Multi-destination coverage: Earned AI Overview presence across all key markets — Maldives, Fiji, Hawaii, Mauritius, and more
  • Traditional SEO uplift: Organic top 10 rankings grew 166% (50 to 133 keywords) during the same period, showing SEO and AEO work together
  • 1.87M Google impressions in under 3 months from AEO-optimized content, with traffic from 95 countries and top pages ranking in positions 3–5
  • 41,970 monthly search volume now captured through AI Overview rankings alone — an entirely new visibility channel

The Takeaway

OUTRIGGER's results prove that AEO isn't a separate strategy — it amplifies existing SEO work. The same content quality, authority, and structure that drives traditional rankings also powers AI Overview visibility, but only when deliberately optimized for it.

The 86% #1 rate in AI Overviews is particularly striking. It suggests that once content is properly structured for AI citation, Google's AI tends to reward it heavily — making early movers in AEO disproportionately visible.

The organic traffic data tells an equally compelling story: the travel resource pages built for AEO generated 1.87 million Google impressions and over 4,400 clicks in the same period, with top pages achieving average positions of 3–5. This content doesn't just earn AI citations — it ranks.

For travel and hospitality brands, the implication is clear: travelers are increasingly getting destination answers from AI-generated summaries. The brands that appear in those summaries will capture mindshare before the traveler ever clicks through to a booking page.

Want results like these?

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