With the rise of AI comes the rise of AI-powered search. Instead of doing a more traditional Google search, people are asking AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or Perplexity.
This presents a new challenge for small businesses: how do I get my business on AI search? We’ve got a handy guide to get you there.
What is AI search?
AI search uses large language models and semantics to interpret questions that a searcher is looking for and generates an answer based on what it finds. Rather than matching keywords to web pages, it takes context from different sources and synthesises an answer.
You might have come across Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). GEO is for more in-depth content that AI can sum up and cite. Meanwhile, AEO helps your content appear in search snippets and other search features.
How does searching with AI work?
AI assistants break information down into smaller sections to be interpreted for relevance and authority. This process is called parsing. The pieces it gathers are combined into a single answer for the searcher. If your content isn’t what these assistants are looking for, they won’t be included, even if they are optimised.
“For a small business, I think the first thing is to strip away some of the jargon as there is a lot of snake oil being peddled,” said James Crawford FPRCA, managing director at PR Agency One. “Instead of searching Google, clicking through a list of websites and making their own comparison, they might ask ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI tool to recommend a business, explain who the main companies are in a market or compare different suppliers.”
AI search principles
GEO partly works on the principle of co-occurrence. This is how often your brand or product appears alongside relevant topics online. Boost your presence by working with partners, writing guest articles on other websites and contributing to forum websites such as Reddit.
“Building a body of press coverage, including features, expert comment and interviews in credible news outlets, has been a deliberate strategy to strengthen how my brands are seen by AI systems as well as by human readers,” said James Demetriades, founder of Zaros and Commerce Club. “Every piece of coverage is essentially another citation pointing back to the brand. The more credible sources that reference you, the more confidently an LLM will recommend you. Get third parties talking about you through press coverage, reviews and mentions, because generative engines weight external sources heavily.”
“Remember that AI trusts what others say about you more than what you say about yourself, so to build authority for your brand you need media coverage in relevant sector media,” added Stephanie King, managing director of BlueSky PR.
Another principle is clarity. Start by heading your website or content with an H1 tag for heading. AI also reads H2 and H3 headings. A description gives AI a good idea of what your business or content is about. Avoid keyword stuffing (this is advisable for SEO, too) in your description and focus on the outcome for the reader.
“We also understand that content needs to be laid out clearly to be scannable by LLMs and fast readers, so each of our service pages opens with a clear sentence on who we are, what we do, and who it’s for,” said King.
Have clear sections for different ideas as crawlers struggle with big chunks of text. Avoid hiding important info in tabs or expandable menus, too. Work with real names, locations and dates, avoid vague claims like ‘innovative’ or ‘eco’. Products should talk about specifics and who the product is designed for.
“Answer the question first, then explain (something I see most founders get the wrong way round). AI tools pull the direct answer, so we always front-load content pieces, which is slightly different compared to how most people think of traditional SEO content pieces being formatted,” said Jordan Price, founder of Small City Marketing.
“Show genuine expertise and a point of view. AI increasingly favours content with real experience and opinion behind it, i.e. the things it can’t generate itself. Generic, AI-written copy is the one thing that won’t rank in AI search (which is a nice irony)!”
In the spirit of clarity, summarise relevant sections with bullet-pointed lists. Think about lists for:
- Product features
- Why customers should choose your business
- Pricing
- Who your product or service is suitable for
Lists give LLMs and your readers a quick overview which is easier to pull through to an AI summary.
As for summaries, include the key points of what you’re trying to say on what webpage into three or four bullet points. You might be noticing these crop up more and more when you’re looking things up online. This is because AI will look at the first few lines of a webpage to get that all-important context.
An FAQ section at the end will serve you well. Phrase your questions the same way that people would ask them.
Demetriades says that if someone asks ChatGPT something that relates to your brand, product or service, the answer should already exist on your website in a clear, structured format that an LLM can read and cite. He added that vague, lifestyle heavy copy doesn’t tend to get cited whereas direct answers from real people do.
“If important information is buried, incomplete or written in marketing language rather than plain language, the model simply can’t use it,” he told Small Business. On both of his websites, key details are laid out so they’re immediately readable for a human visitor and for a machine trying to extract and summarise information accurately. For Zaros, that means product attributes, materials, dimensions and the brand’s positioning are all clearly stated. For Commerce Club, the programme structure, who it’s for and the results members achieve are answered explicitly rather than implied.
“We worked on making the site easier for AI to read by adding a dedicated FAQ page, an llms.txt file, both written for AI tools but equally understandable and useful for any real people that might read them,” said King. “Next, we worked through our key pages adding schema and structured data to tell search engines and AI exactly what the page is about, who wrote it and which company is behind it. We now do this for every new blog post, and every older blog we update.”
SEO is still important
Though SEO and GEO scan different things, the principles of SEO still stand.
Clearly structured and easy to read
As mentioned, content that’s easy for both humans and machines to read is key. Schema markup gives machines readable info about what’s on your page. They work best on product, review, recipe or article pages. It helps search engines to display results, with local business markup giving more information about businesses.
Unique viewpoint
Having unique viewpoints, such as customers or case studies, will help you stand out from similar, generic pages. This could be a first-hand blog posts, testimonials or experts in your sector.
Add high-quality images and video
AI can find context in photos and videos, too. Remember to put alt text on images to describe what’s going in the picture, such as ‘woman holding cup of coffee looking out of window’. Providing a transcript alongside a video can give readers who are unable to watch the video an idea of what’s going on, while giving crawlers more information.
No playing the system
Avoid creating content for every variation of a search term. Google considers this a violation of their scaled content abuse spam policy.
Mobile-friendly
As always, make sure that your site displays well across devices – desktop, tablet, smartphone. Reduce loading time as far as possible to stop people clicking away out of frustration.
Optimised metadata
The metadata outlines the keyword your page is ranking for and describes what’s going on in the page.
Internal linking
Link to other pages on your website to guide readers to other useful information and to help search engines understand your site structure. It also helps websites to index and gain authority on a topic.
Update content frequently
This send a signal that your site is still active and that the information and expertise is as up to date as it can be.
Key differences between SEO and GEO
They might seem similar on a surface level, but SEO and GEO look for different things.
| SEO | GEO |
| Looks for a lot of content to scrape from for search | Reads the first part of the content to check for relevance and authority |
| Benefits from schema structuring | Structured data isn’t as fundamental to success |
| Based on keywords | Based on conversational content |
| Reads user engagement, loading speed, internal links and other measures | Reads intent and context |
The short answer to SEO or GEO? Satisfy both if you can.
“Google has made it clear that GEO and AEO are both built on the back of good SEO, so before doing anything else, we made sure that our website had all the SEO basics in place and that nothing was blocking AI crawlers,” said King.
How not to optimise for AI search
We’ve covered a lot on what to do to optimise for AI, but there are some potential blunders to be aware of.
“There is no quick fix,” said Crawford. “There are some awful short-term hacks out there around listicle spam and prompt injections. I would also avoid advising a small business to start by trying to ‘write for ChatGPT’. Instead start by making the information about your company clear, useful, current and credible wherever people, and AI systems, are likely to encounter it.”
He warned of danger around creating a new generation of vanity metrics around AI search. “It is relatively easy to type prompts into an AI tool, see whether your company appears and produce a visibility score. But the answer can change according to the wording of the question, the platform being used, the user, location and time,” he said. “A company appearing in five AI answers rather than three does not automatically mean its marketing is working better. To get all scientific about it, there is no universe of data and despite some tools telling us otherwise we do not know what other people ask.”
Small businesses need get savvy and think:
- Are we visible online for the products and services we offer and do we have a bigger share of voice than our competitors?
- Is our PR and information accurate?
- Are we being described in the way we want to be? Are credible sources in the media supporting that description?
- Is that visibility contributing to awareness, enquiries, consideration or sales?
“That is not easy, and I can see why AI search is important, but I think businesses should resist turning it into another scoreboard. The objective is to make sure that when customers use AI to research your market, they find an accurate, credible and useful picture of your business, rather than ‘manipulating Chat GPT’.”
Is optimising for AI search worth it?
It takes a little time to get used to, but optimising GEO on top of SEO seems to deliver fruitful results.
“It’s a lot of work but it’s working,” King told Small Business. “We’ve been tracking prompts our target audience is likely to ask AI tools and we now hold two-thirds of the share of voice against other PR agencies. Our own website is actually the source AI cites most often, which is rare. Muck Rack’s research found 84% of AI citations come from earned media, not the brand’s own website.”
