_____ CONTEXT WRAPPING EXPLAINED

Context wrapping is the practice of consistently pairing your brand name with a specific keyword or phrase that represents your expertise, both on-site and off-site. In short, wherever your brand is mentioned, it appears "wrapped" in the same descriptive context. We coined the term at Reboot to describe this repeatable way of teaching models and search engines what you should be known for.

This helps AI models and search engines associate your brand with a niche topic. As a result, your brand is more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated answers and boost traditional SEO signals. This tactic plays a key role in our GEO (Generative AI Optimisation) campaigns and complements our broader SEO efforts to build topical authority.

Why context wrapping matters for GEO

How LLMs learn

AI systems and search algorithms learn by noticing patterns and context. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are trained on text data, which means they pick up on which words and names tend to appear together. If your brand consistently appears next to a particular phrase, AI will learn to link the two.

In fact, AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity use unlinked mentions of a brand to recognise and reinforce that brand’s identity through the surrounding context - no backlinks necessary.

Put simply, this means that being mentioned alongside the right keywords can influence an AI’s understanding of what your brand is known for.

What Google understands

Search engines like Google do something similar via their algorithms. Their algorithms analyse the "co-occurrence" and proximity of words to identify relationships and relevance.

Put simply, this means Google "reads" the words around your brand name in articles and backlinks to gauge which topics and expertise are associated with your brand.

Repeating your brand name next to a consistent description - for example, "[Brand Name], EV battery recycling specialist" - sends a strong signal to search engines that your brand is relevant to EV battery recycling, and you are experts.

Why entities and context are a winning combo

This is why context wrapping works so well in GEO campaigns. Generative AI search prioritises entities (brands, people, organisations) and the context around them more than traditional blue links. AI-powered search engines are prioritising brand mentions, authority, and context over traditional rankings.

By "context wrapping" your brand with a specific context, you’re effectively training both AI models and Google to recognise your brand as a go-to name in that area of expertise. Establishing your brand with high-authority, context-rich mentions greatly increases the chances of being cited in AI-generated answers. In other words, if you want your brand to appear when someone asks an AI assistant a question in your niche, you need to feed the AI plenty of examples of your brand in that niche context - and context wrapping does exactly that.

One of our GEO agency campaigns illustrates how powerful context wrapping can be.

An example of context wrapping in action

The brief

Alan Boswell Group, a UK insurance provider, wanted to increase its visibility for one of its key products: unoccupied property insurance. Initially, if someone asked ChatGPT or another LLM, "Who are the best unoccupied home insurance experts in the UK?", Alan Boswell was nowhere to be found. Our goal was to change that by firmly associating "Alan Boswell" with “unoccupied home insurance expert".

What we did

We ran targeted Digital PR campaigns using our AiPR approach. We created press releases built around data and insights on unoccupied properties (using FOI requests and surveys), which naturally tied into the topic of unoccupied home insurance.

In every press release, we context-wrapped the brand mention. Whenever Alan Boswell Group was mentioned, it was accompanied by the descriptor "unoccupied home insurance experts" in the surrounding copy.

We secured placements on multiple high-authority websites (including national news outlets and niche industry publications), ensuring the context around Alan Boswell reinforced their expertise in unoccupied property insurance.

We even secured coverage on BBC News, and the article explicitly referred to "Alan Boswell Group, unoccupied house insurance experts" - the exact phrase we were aiming for.

The results

Just three weeks after outreach began, Alan Boswell Group started appearing in AI-generated responses for the targeted queries and traffic coming to the Alan Boswell site from LLM-driven sources increased significantly.

Referral visits from large language models increased by +194.72%, including a +382.5% surge specifically in traffic from ChatGPT. More importantly, users coming via those AI recommendations were engaging with the site. Key conversion events driven by LLM referrals went up by +233%, indicating that not only were people discovering the brand through AI answers, they were also engaging with the brand by requesting quotes.

Context wrapping didn’t just influence AI outcomes, but also helped boost the site’s SEO performance. Most of the coverage secured included a backlink to Alan Boswell’s product page in addition to the context-wrapped mention (even the BBC piece included a link). These high-quality, context-rich backlinks helped improve the site’s organic rankings for related keywords. After the campaign, Alan Boswell’s domain ranked higher for a range of unoccupied property insurance search terms that we targeted.

By placing Alan Boswell Group alongside "unoccupied home insurance experts" in trusted sources, we simultaneously taught AI models to recommend the brand and signalled to Google that this site is topically authoritative - a GEO and SEO success story.

How to "context wrap" in 5 steps

Context wrapping is a technique anyone can apply with a bit of planning and persistence.

Here’s a practical five-step guide to make it work for your brand:

Choose a phrase to own

Start by identifying the specific niche or phrase you want your brand to be synonymous with. This should be directly relevant to your expertise and ideally a term that your target audience might use in queries.

Think in terms of what a customer might ask AI or search - for example, "EV battery recycling specialist", "luxury safari travel expert", or "unoccupied home insurance provider".

Pick a phrase that is narrow enough - for example, owning "insurance" is unrealistic, but "unoccupied home insurance expert" is - and that aligns with your core service(s). This is the phrase you’re going to wrap your brand name with consistently.

Use it consistently in your press materials

Once you have your signature phrase, bake it into all your Digital PR materials and outreach content. Every press release, guest article, or quote you send out should include your brand name alongside that chosen descriptor.

For instance, if your phrase is "EV battery recycling specialist", your press release might say, "According to [Brand Name], EV battery recycling specialist" in the opening line.

Brief your Digital PR agency (or whoever is handling outreach) that the brand + phrase pairing is a non-negotiable in your copy. Consistency is key, and the more repetition, the stronger the association becomes for AI and search algorithms.

Get placements on trusted, relevant sites

Context wrapping only works if the context-wrapped mentions of your brand are on websites that search engines and AI models consider credible. As a result, you should focus your efforts on earning coverage in high-authority publications and outlets that are topically relevant to your industry.

LLMs are likely trained on authoritative websites, and Google gives more weight to links/mentions from authoritative domains. So, send your press releases to sites that have strong authority - such as national news, respected trade journals, .edu or .org resources, etc. - and that make sense contextually (i.e. an automotive tech site for the EV recycling example).

After all, mentions on a trusted news site or industry-leading blog will reap stronger results than mentions on low-tier sites. Always remember, quality over quantity.

When your brand plus keyword appear in an article on a site that both AI and Google trust, the context signal it sends is far more powerful.

Do the same on your own site

Make sure your website echoes the same context you’re trying to build externally. This reinforces the connection for search engines and lends credibility to anyone who clicks through to your website.

Add the chosen phrase to your on-page copy where appropriate - for example, work it into your homepage value proposition or your About Us spiel ("We’re a leading EV battery recycling specialist based in X").

Consider creating a dedicated landing page or blog content around that topic, if you haven’t already, which you can internally link to.

By aligning your on-site SEO structure with your context wrapping term, you present a unified front. This consistency helps to bolster your topical relevance in Google’s eyes and makes it clear to any humans that you specialise in that area.

Monitor your progress

As with any strategy, you’ll want to keep an eye on the results and adjust if needed. Schedule time to check how AI models are responding by asking AI models a question related to your target phrase - for example, "Who are the top EV battery recycling specialists?".

If your brand isn’t showing up, you may need to ramp up your efforts with more context-wrapped placements or ensure the phrasing is even more consistent.

It’s also worth monitoring your web analytics for referral traffic from AI sources. You can often identify ChatGPT or other LLM referrals, especially in GA4, and track any changes in your organic search rankings for the keywords in your phrase as well.

Over time, you should see clear improvements. If not, you should reconsider the phrase you are trying to context wrap or assess the quality of your placements.

Where context wrapping fits into your marketing strategy

It’s important to note that context wrapping isn’t a standalone tactic or a replacement for your broader marketing and SEO strategy. Instead, it supports and enhances your wider marketing efforts across PR, SEO and brand.

Here’s how context wrapping fits into the bigger picture:

Combine with Digital PR efforts

Context wrapping works best with strong Digital PR campaigns. You still need compelling stories or data to earn the high-authority, relevant placements in the first place. What context wrapping does is ensure your digital PR efforts work even harder - every piece of coverage not only earns a backlink or brand visibility, but also reinforces your expertise in a given topic.

In practice, you’ll plan your PR campaigns with an eye on context. For example, if you’re trying to be known as a "sustainable fashion expert", your press release might be angled around sustainability in fashion so that the context feels natural when your brand is mentioned.

By aligning PR content with your context term, you make it easy for journalists to include your brand + phrase. So, continue investing in quality PR that earns coverage, and use context wrapping to amplify the SEO and AI benefits of that coverage.

On-site alignment and SEO

Context wrapping should be complemented by strong on-site SEO and content strategy. This means producing high-quality, relevant content about the subject, and structuring your site in a way that highlights that expertise.

If you’re claiming to be the authority on "EV battery recycling", but your site has only a thin page on it, even with external mentions, users (and Google) may not be satisfied that you are the expert. Strengthen your topical authority by building content hubs or resource pages for that topic, and make sure your technical SEO (site speed, schema markup, etc.) is solid so that Google can easily crawl and index those signals.

Consistent brand messaging

Context wrapping is a form of brand positioning, as you are positioning your brand as the answer for a certain query or the go-to expert in a certain field. For this to stick, your overall brand messaging should reflect that position.

As a result, make sure your marketing materials - such as social media bios, and even offline collateral - consistently back up your claim. If you call yourself the "XYZ specialist" in press articles but nowhere else, it looks like fake PR.

To showcase your expertise on-site, include case studies and testimonials that highlight your specialist work in that niche, or encourage people to mention it in interviews. Over time, your brand will become top-of-mind for that topic.

What’s more, it also means that when an AI scours various sources (your site, news articles, social profiles), it gathers a unified message about who you are, which can strengthen the confidence AI and search algorithms have in associating your brand with the context.

Merge with broader strategies

Context wrapping works best alongside other SEO/GEO techniques and content strategies. For instance, we often combine context wrapping with our Hyper Relevancy Projects approach to link building, ensuring that not only is the context right, but the links we build are from hyper-relevant sources.

We also tie it into our overall search marketing agency strategy for clients – covering technical SEO improvements, on-site content revamps, and digital PR, with context wrapping woven through these activities.

The end goal is a marketing strategy where everything from your media coverage to your homepage to your LinkedIn posts is all, in their own way, telling AI and Google that your brand = XYZ expert.

When done right, context wrapping supports your in-house or SEO agency roadmap by improving relevance, boosting your Digital PR by giving it a clear focus, and reinforcing your brand identity to both humans and algorithms.

Why do context wrapping?

In summary, always surround your brand with the right context. By consistently “context wrapping” your brand, you help AI and humans understand exactly what expertise your brand brings to the table. This can lead to your brand being cited in AI answers and improve your organic search performance through stronger topical authority signals.

For marketers and SEOs navigating this new era of AI, context wrapping offers a practical way to bridge the gap between traditional SEO and the new world of AI search. When your potential customers ask a question, whether it’s to Google or to ChatGPT, make sure your brand is wrapped in the context that makes it the obvious answer.