At a Glance
- AI assistants and answer engines rely on authority signals to decide who to quote — not just who ranks. Webflow’s AEO framework treats authority as one of four core pillars, alongside content, technical, and measurement.
- Authority in this context is built from web signals (structure, UX, clarity) and brand signals (expertise, citations, consistent entity data) that tell AI: “This is a safe source to stake an answer on.”
- New research shows classic SEO metrics (DA/DR) have weak correlation with LLM visibility, which means smaller brands can win if they design authority deliberately around their niche.
Why Authority Is Being Redefined in an AI-First World
Most marketing leaders grew up with a simple mental model: higher domain authority + more links = more trust. That’s still relevant for classic SEO, but it’s an incomplete picture in AI search.
Webflow’s AEO playbook defines authority as “signals of brand credibility that AI models trust,” emphasising expert-led content, consistent entities, and earned mentions. Ahrefs’ latest work on LLM citations goes a step further: when an AI cites you, it’s effectively telling the user, “This source is reliable enough to stake my answer on.”
At the same time, large-scale studies on authority metrics and LLM visibility find that traditional authority scores (DA/DR) correlate weakly — or even negatively — with how often domains are cited in AI responses. AI models lean more on topical relevance, clarity, and the context in which your brand appears than on raw size.
So the question shifts from “How do we crank DR?” to:
“What web and brand signals are we sending — and do they make it easy for AI to trust us on the topics that actually matter?”
The Three Layers of Authority Signals AI Actually Uses
You can think of authority for AI in three layers: on-site clarity, experience & UX, and off-site / entity signals. All three are design choices, not accidents.
1. On-Site Clarity: Can AI See a Real Expert Behind This?
AI needs to see clear expertise, structure, and evidence on the page.
Webflow’s AEO authority guidance and playbook recommend expert-bylined content, consistent topic depth, and publishing patterns that reinforce your expertise. Ahrefs’ citation research shows that LLMs overwhelmingly cite pages that are:
- clearly scoped around a topic,
- well-structured with headings, lists, and definitions, and
- backed by concrete data or examples.
Design-wise, that means:
- Prominent author bios with credentials, not anonymous “Team” posts.
- Clear, descriptive H1/H2s, explicit definitions, and “what/why/how” sections.
- A visible “last updated” + methodology or references section on key guides.
These signals reassure both humans and models that there’s a real expert behind the content.
2. Experience & UX: Does This Look Like a Site People Trust?
Authority isn’t just words — it’s how those words are presented.
Technical AEO guidance from Webflow stresses that solid performance, accessibility, and clean structure underpin both authority and visibility. UX-focused research is aligning with this: responsive layouts, consistent branding, and intuitive navigation all correlate with stronger AEO and AI relevance signals.
Signals you can design in:
- Fast, stable pages with no jarring layout shifts or spammy pop-ups.
- Cohesive visual system: consistent colour, typography, and component patterns across the site.
- Clear paths from high-level answers to deeper proof (guides, case studies, docs).
AI models “see” these via HTML structure, internal links, and engagement patterns — all of which are shaped by your UX and design choices.
3. Off-Site & Entity Signals: Does the Wider Web Agree You’re Legit?
AI cares about the story the wider web tells about you.
Webflow’s authority pillar and AEO strategy resources highlight three big external levers: reputable citations, consistent brand/entity data, and accurate AI summaries. Growth-focused analyses on brand authority for AI search draw a line between “brand authority” (how widely and consistently you’re referenced) and “topical authority” (how deeply you cover a subject).
Designable signals here include:
- A clean, consistent entity footprint (org schema, “sameAs” links, Knowledge Panel, bios).
- A small number of high-signal mentions in trusted publications and communities relevant to your niche.
- A habit of monitoring AI summaries and correcting factual errors at the source when you can.
Together, these layers create the “this brand is safe to trust here” profile that LLMs look for.
How Underscore Designs Authority Into Your Webflow Presence
This is where we stop talking theory and talk process. Here’s how we’d bake these authority signals into a Webflow build or redesign.
1. Codify Your Authority Story Before We Touch Layout
We start by forcing a simple decision: Where do you deserve to be the expert? Using Webflow’s AEO playbook as a reference, we define:
- 3–5 topics or verticals where you want to be the default answer,
- your proof stack for each (data, case studies, credentials), and
- the “source-of-truth” URLs that will carry that authority.
This becomes a one–two page authority brief that guides IA, content, and off-site focus.
2. Treat Key Pages as Trust Canvases, Not Just Layouts
On Webflow, we then design key templates (home, solution, industry, guides) as trust canvases:
- Dedicated sections for “who we are and why we’re qualified.”
- Structured proof blocks: metrics, logos, quotes that are easy to parse.
- Clear author attribution and links to deeper expertise (playbooks, research).
The result is pages that feel credible to humans — and are structurally rich with the cues AI uses to assess authority.
3. Build an Authority Feedback Loop Around AI Answers
Finally, we connect the site to the outside world:
- Set up AI visibility monitoring (e.g., LLM citations, AI search traffic) so you can see which pages and topics LLMs already trust you on.
- Run quarterly reviews of AI answers for your core topics, log misalignments, and feed those back into content and design updates.
Authority stops being a vague aspiration and becomes something you can observe and influence.
Bringing It Together — And What to Do Next
Designing for authority in the age of AI isn’t about chasing every metric. It’s about making a handful of deliberate decisions:
- Where you want to be trusted.
- How you show that expertise on your site.
- How consistently the rest of the web backs that story up.
Web and brand signals are the levers you control. If you align them, you make it very easy for AI to say, “You can trust this” — even when you’re up against bigger names.
If you want a clear view of how your current signals stack up — and what would need to change to make your Webflow site feel like an obvious authority to both humans and AI — that’s exactly what we unpack in a Webflow AEO Audit: we map your authority story, audit your signals, and turn the gaps into a realistic roadmap.
Sources
- Winning AEO with authority: How to build credibility and earn trust in AI search
- The AEO playbook for AI search
- How to win AEO with content
- How to Earn LLM Citations to Build Traffic & Authority
- 67% of ChatGPT’s Top 1000 Citations Are Off-Limits to Businesses
- The marketer’s guide to LLM search terms: From SEO to AEO
- The technical side of AEO: Structuring your site for AI discovery
- Authority Metrics in the Age of LLMs: Visibility Correlation Analysis
- An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K brands)
- How you can track Brand Authority for AI Search
- How to Increase Website Traffic with AEO
