How to Optimise for AI Search (Not Just Google)

🤖 Search is changing – and FAST

Search is changing—and fast. While traditional SEO focused on ranking in Google’s top 10 results, users are now increasingly turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s own AI Overviews for instant, conversational answers. This shift is redefining what visibility means on the web.So, how do you stay relevant when people are searching with AI instead of search engines? That’s exactly what this guide is about.

🤖 Welcome to the Era of AI Search

AI-powered search tools don’t just crawl web pages—they generate answers. That means your content doesn’t just need to rank… it needs to be quoted, cited, and *understood* by machines trained to interpret human language.

Unlike traditional search engines, which present lists of links, AI systems pull from a mix of sources to generate direct responses. If your content isn’t built for this, you may be invisible to the fastest-growing type of search.

🎯 The Goal: Become “Answerable”

Optimising for AI search isn’t about keywords alone. It’s about becoming the *source* that AI tools refer to, summarise, or link to. You need to build credibility, clarity, and contextual authority.

✅ 1. Structure Your Content Like an AI Would

• 🔹 Use clear question-and-answer formats
• 🔹 Include bulleted or numbered lists for easy summarisation
• 🔹 Add FAQs at the end of your pages
• 🔹 Use short, factual intros that explain your content clearly
• 🔹 Employ descriptive headings (H2s, H3s) that echo user intent

AI tools love clean, scannable structures. If a language model can easily pick out an answer, it’s more likely to feature your site in its output.

🧠 2. Focus on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust)

Google’s AI Overviews and LLMs like ChatGPT favour sources with proven experience. Here’s how to demonstrate it:

• 📍 Include an About the Author box on every post
• 📍 Link to a dedicated Author or Team bio page with credentials
• 📍 Show real-world expertise—case studies, personal insights, quotes
• 📍 Build backlinks from respected sources in your niche

Remember, AI tools pull from what’s already seen as trustworthy. Give them a reason to trust you.

🔗 3. Be Where AI Looks: Key Source Platforms

Many AI tools crawl or integrate information from trusted public sources beyond your website. You need to be present on:

• 🧵 Reddit – Frequently used by Perplexity, Claude, and Bing Chat
• 📹 YouTube – Transcripts often pulled into summaries
• 📰 Medium, Quora, and Substack – Common AI training data
• 📚 Wikipedia and Wikidata – Power Google’s Knowledge Graph
• 🏢 Google Business, LinkedIn, and Crunchbase – For entity recognition

Get active, post useful insights, and link back to your main website where possible.

📐 4. Add Schema Markup (Seriously)

Schema is the language of structured data, and AI loves it. Implement:

• ✅ FAQ Schema
• ✅ HowTo Schema
• ✅ Article Schema
• ✅ Person and Organization Schemas
• ✅ Review and Product if applicable

Even ChatGPT and Claude use schema data during citation and entity understanding. It’s invisible to readers, but visible to machines.

📊 5. Include Facts, Figures, and Definitions

AI tools love to use concise facts, stats, and definitions in their responses. Try to:

• 📌 Include key terms and their definitions in plain English
• 📌 Use up-to-date stats from reliable sources
• 📌 Create glossaries or “What is…” posts

This positions you as an “explainer” and increases the chance of your content being summarised or cited.

🌐 6. Get Your Entity Right

LLMs rely heavily on “entity recognition.” Make sure your business or personal brand is seen as an entity:

• 🧾 Use consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across the web
• 🧾 Link your website to your social media accounts
• 🧾 Fill out your Google Business Profile and Bing Places
• 🧾 Add Organization schema to your homepage

This helps AI tools associate your name or business with expertise in your niche.

📄 7. Write Content That Sounds Human (But Is Machine-Friendly)

LLMs process *natural language* but also need clarity. Make sure your content:

• 🗣️ Uses plain, conversational English
• 🗣️ Avoids vague jargon or fluff
• 🗣️ Uses clear logic and transitions
• 🗣️ Answers the question directly in the first paragraph

This makes it easier for AI to quote or paraphrase your text accurately.

📣 8. Use Authoritative Citations

When referencing facts or stats, cite respected sources like:

• 🔍 Government websites
• 🔍 Reputable industry blogs
• 🔍 Academic journals or news organisations

AI tools factor in the authority of your citations when determining if your content is credible.

🛠️ 9. Contribute to the “AI Knowledge Loop”

This is more advanced, but valuable: contribute to the platforms or datasets AI is trained on, such as:

• 🔬 Open-source projects on GitHub
• 📘 Community Q&A sites
• 🧠 Publish research or whitepapers

Over time, your contributions can become part of the datasets used to train or fine-tune new models.

🚀 Final Thoughts: It’s Not SEO vs AI—It’s SEO *For* AI

Think of this shift as the next evolution of SEO. Google isn’t going away, but how people find answers is changing. Visibility in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews is the new frontier.

Start now. Optimise for AI search not by guessing the algorithm, but by being *the best answer* to the questions your audience is asking—no matter where they’re asking them.