The answer to that question is yes, and no. Let me explain
Is AI search important to my business?
Yes. There are a wide range of AI tools available, the most popular with the general public like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are being used more and more. Many people no longer use Google Search. If they have a question or a problem they ask their favourite AI agent. Many people also use a mix, sometimes Google, sometimes AI. And even if they use Google, this is now also using AI to deliver results. Therefore what you want, as a businsess is to be referenced in AI answers. For example, if someone wants to know which accountant they should use for their small business in Hull, and you are an accountant in Hull, you want the AI program to say that they should use you, or at least give you as an option.
Does AI mean I don’t need a website?
Does AI mean I don’t need a website?AI will deliver information about your business, often everything needed, to someone making a query. That means they may not even visit your website. So is it needed? The first thing to consider is where did AI get all this information about your business, and why did it decide to mention you, over other businesses?
Very simply, it got information from around the web, but one of the main sources is, your website. Without that website, your business would not have been mentioned in the AI answer. An excellent website is as important as ever. Just remember that people using information from it (delivered via AI) may not actually visit it. And don’t forget the traditional Google search is still used a lot, so you want to loose visitors to your website from the Google search.
How can I optimise my website for AI
There are lots of things you can do to optimise your site for AI. First of all have you optimised for the regular Google Search?
Almost everything you do for SEO will also help you getting found on AI search. It may be that some things are more impottant for SEO and some for AI. But there isn’t really anything that you would do with one that is detrimental to the other. So I recommend reading the following blogs and use them to make an SEO plan for your website.
But is there anything from these blogs to specifically focus on or to do differently?
AI does seem to take a lot of notice of your presence around the web. So that means your social profiles, mentions on other websites, Google Business, listings on directories, guest blogs and links into your site. So managing and growing these is useful.
FAQs. AI is all about answering questions. Having FAQs on every page of you’re a site will help AI answer the questions it’s users are asking. Use sites like answerthepublic.com to see what the public are asking about your industry. Use those questions on your FAQ. I suggest having a 4 or 5 question FAQs on every page. Ensure they are relevant to that page.
Try and ensure most paragraphs of text make sense on their own without relating to other paragraphs. In some cases you just can’t do this. But, in, many places you can, and it allows AI to lift those chunks of your text and use it when answering questions.
Fresh content on your website is another super important factor for being found in the AI search. That could be adding news articles, blog or pages or just going back and editing and updating existing blogs and pages. Businesses with static websites that have not been recently updated are far less likely to be referenced.
So don’t throw out the SEO playbook, but shift your focus and think about how An AI tool can use what you are providing.
Once my business is referenced on an AI answer, what happens next?
The answer is, that is the goal. The AI tool has mentioned you in an answer to a question. That’s want you want (as long as the question is right). What this doesn’t lead to is clicks. So success in AI mentions is much harder to track. Those mentions should however, in some cases create leads. From that AI answer some people may visit your website, others may find you on LinkedIn, others may ask AI for your phone number and give you a call. The best way to see how well this is going is to get a regular AI mention report from us. We can provide updates about how well you are doing at appearing for different queries across different AI platforms.
