AI is Changing The Way People Find Your Business
The rise of AI clients on the Internet has been nothing short of revolutionary—and we’re just getting started. AI’s like ChatGPT, Perplexity.ai, Copilot and Claude are also affecting how people search for information online.
How do you, as a business owner, ensure that AI’s are seeing and citing your website when it’s relevant? How will AI affect SEO and search results in the next few years?
Let’s talk about it!
How Do I Get My Pages to Appear in AI Search Responses?
This is the million dollar question—but the answer is a lot more obvious than you might think. The truth is that the goal of AI search is essentially the same as the goal of the conventional search engine. Relevance and quality.
Simply put, the AI “wants” to please you with the best possible answer to your query—-just like Google does. AI’s are very information-oriented. 88.1% of the queries that trigger an AI response are informational. So, start there. Provide useful information right from the start, especially if your title poses a question.
AI’s look for websites with solid SEO. That doesn’t mean gameplaying or keyword stuffing. It means clear, structured content with relevant keywords. Pretty much everything that helps a site legitimately rank well in search engines, will make it attractive to AI. That also includes things that are often neglected—like meta tags and schema markup.
Getting Your Pages to Appear in AI Search Results
- Focus on Relevance: Does your content answer the questions it asks? Is it on-topic?
- Quality: Is your content clear and well-written? Quality matters across the board.
- Answers: Are you providing great answers to queries and solid, digestible information?
- Precision: Remember that AI also relies on things like meta descriptions, tags and schema markup.
- Authority: Is your site a trusted source? Do you cite trustworthy sources?
- Performance: Does your site load quickly? On mobile too? What’s your Site Speed?
Who’s Ready to EEAT?
No, we’re not about to serve dinner. EEAT is a framework used by Google to assess the quality and relevance of a webpage. E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
This is a core part of Google’s metric for ranking websites according to quality—and it’s a good one, so it’s more than a fair assumption that the best search AIs will use similar parameters.
One of the biggest impacts AI search will have on content is that it will improve results. The pages that are the most informative, accurate, relevant and trustworthy will be rewarded more than ever before.
Improving Your Content EEAT to Attract AI to Your Pages
- Experience: Bring relevant personal experience to the content wherever and whenever possible. Don’t forget the human experience element and just regurgitate dry facts.
- Expertise: Have your content written, reviewed by an expert or reviewed by a credentialed expert who is credited in the content.
- Authority: Authority takes time to build, but you can begin to generate validation with quality backlinks and endorsements.
- Trustworthiness: Make sure your content is accurate and up to date. Be direct and honest. Never mislead people. Cite reputable sources for data or claims.
How Exactly is AI Changing The Way Search Works?
In a nutshell, you can think of AI search as quality control. To attract AI search, you want to follow the EEAT principles for content. But you also want to pay close attention to the under the hood details that human readers may not notice.
Things like meta descriptions, image and meta tags and schema markup help an AI understand what your page is about. You want to structure your content well on the page, but also be thorough in how you handle the behind the scenes details.
The important adaptations needed for AI search is to review your content to ensure it is informative and concise. Make sure it’s well structured on page. Utilize the AP inverted pyramid style where the most important details are at the top. Your content should be easy to summarize and digest.
Bringing Your Business Website Up to Speed with AI Search
Just because your website has performed well in the past does not mean it will continue to do so. It’s virtually guaranteed if you sit still, you’ll lose ranking over time. This was true long before AI entered the equation.
The best way to ensure your website’s content is AI-search friendly is to partner with a forward-looking digital marketing agency that isn’t using a stale, old SEO playbook. Humans are creatures of habit. So digital marketing agencies are sometimes guilty of resting on their laurels or continuing to do what’s worked in the past.
If your SEO content provider looks confused when you ask them about what they’re doing to attract AI search, then it’s time to give Digital Elements a call at (610) 300-3704.
