Traditionally, company SEO goals have been to rank well for high-volume and traffic driving keywords.
“Hyperoptimised pages — built more for search engines than people — would send visitors to a top-of-the-funnel page and attempt to convert them into newsletter subscribers, webinar attendees or other downstream conversions,” says Michael Buckbee, cofounder of Knowatoa — a platform that tracks brand visibility, rankings and sentiment within AI search services like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google Gemini.
Now, things are changing. New AI search tools don’t want us to leave the platform by clicking on external links. They’re also stripping away a lot of the SEO writing on websites when they serve up results to provide more direct and simple answers — no more wading through paragraphs before getting to a recipe.
“The future of SEO is less about gimmicks and more about brand and content,” says Michael. “This is where you need to shift your focus if you want your startup to be discoverable.”
So how do you get started with SEO for AI?
Create an FAQs page for AI to scrape
AI search tools will be your company's most popular and least trained representatives. You need it to correctly answer the key questions that prospective customers are asking as part of their buying process. For example:
- Where does the company operate?
- What exact features does it offer?
- What trust and security certifications do you hold?
These questions might not have been an SEO priority but are now essential.
To ensure accurate results, create a buyer's guide or FAQs page for your website that AIs can scrape. A good place to start is to list all the common reasons people object to purchasing from you — and then convert them into compelling Q&As.
Get people talking about your brand online
AI search models form a judgement about a brand based on social sentiment and will look at discussions about the brand across the web. If ChatGPT perceives your brand to be untrustworthy or doesn't believe it provides value for money, it will often include this as part of its responses. A good way to test what an AI search tool thinks about your brand is to ask it questions like, "Is (my brand) a good investment?" or "Is (my brand) worth the hype?"
You can improve results by focusing on your company’s digital footprint. Create a strategy to get and publish more positive reviews, testimonials, user-generated content and other social content.
Focus on more down-funnel sales
As AI overviews become more commonplace in search results, the highest return on investment will come from ranking for questions that we’d usually consider further down the sales funnel. For example, prospective clients might ask, “What's the best product in this category?" or "What’s the top reviewed company for this service in my area?"
To beat competitors at these questions, you need to create more content around your brand statement that straightforwardly answers them. Write and publish case studies, comparisons, etc. that directly state why your brand is the best and who it is for. Keep it simple and direct. Remember, this content is for the AI more than anything.
Make sure AI search engines can index your site
For years, many sites have been able to get away with allowing only Googlebot to index them. Today, more than 24 active AI indexing bots are crawling the web, and many sites are blocking them.
- Your site might have a robots.txt file. This is a public statement requesting how you'd like bots to interact with your site. Review it to ensure that it does not block any AI indexing bots. If you're unsure how to interpret your robots.txt file, copy and paste it into your favorite AI tool and ask for an analysis.
- You might be using Cloudflare, security plugins or other cloud-based security services that actively block bots. You'll need to test them individually by manually running tests from the command line. We’ve developed a free AI search console tool you can use too.
Find out what AIs already know — then plug the gaps
AI search models are still learning. Many challenger brands are ranking above established competitors by developing content that answers questions with little to no AI competition. Spend time with AI tools to find out what it already knows about your brand and your industry. Ask it all your key questions about your audience and their problems. Find out what solutions AIs recommend. If your company or solutions don’t show up, plug the gaps, quickly, with your own content on your own sites, apps and socials.
