Prepping Your Website For AI: SEO Best Practices for Now & The Future Of Search

The way people find information online is changing fast. While popular search engine websites like Google and Bing are still important, new AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are becoming a go-to information source for many. As a digital marketing agency with extensive experience in SEO, we work to make sure your brand is seen by the right people wherever they look for you. We’re dedicated to keeping up with the trends as they emerge. This guide will explain how to prep your website for search and AI tools. This will help you reach more people and build a strong online presence in 2025 and beyond.

How AI Finds Information: What You Need to Know

Chatbot tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini use Large Language Models (LLMs). These models are trained on massive datasets of text and code from across the internet, like websites, books, and articles. This training allows them to understand and generate human-like text, enabling them to answer questions, summarize information, and even create content. They don’t always have direct access to live websites unless they use external tools or APIs.

When you ask an AI chatbot a question, it uses what it has learned to give you an answer. It’s like having a super-smart friend who knows a lot about everything.

How asking ChatGPT Is Different from Google and Bing

Regular search engines like Google and Bing find information by crawling and indexing billions of web pages, ranking them based on content, keywords, backlinks, and website authority. They then show you a list of website links with the answer you’re looking for.

AI tools like Gemini and ChatGPT give you direct answers and summaries based on their training data and, in some cases, real-time information accessed through integrations. Instead of just a list of links, you receive a summarized response, often with citations showing where the information came from.

So, instead of looking through many websites, you get a quick answer from the AI’s direct information knowledge base. This is why it’s important to make sure your website’s information is accurate and easy for these tools to find and understand.

Watch for future integrations like Google’s AI Overviews. This feature partners Google’s search engine with the Gemini LLM to show you the top 3 results in a conversational format that summarizes what the top results say. This reiterates why SEO best practices are critical to follow.

Making Your Content Work for AI and Regular Search

According to Google’s Search Central, “AI Overviews in Google Search provide generative responses to help users quickly understand information from various sources. Links in AI Overviews direct users to relevant resources, enabling them to explore the topic further and discover diverse content. Publishers do not need to take any specific action to be included in AI Overviews, following Google Search Essentials is sufficient.”

So, for now, the good news is many of the best practices for traditional SEO also benefit your visibility on AI platforms. We optimize content for both conventional search engines and AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, and we’re keeping an eye on what’s next.

1. Create High-Quality Content – For People

• Answer Questions Clearly: Make sure your website has content that answers common questions people in your industry might have. Think about having pages with frequently asked questions (FAQs) or how-to steps.
• Give Lots of Helpful Information: While keeping your answers clear, also make sure you give enough details to be useful to the user.
• Be Accurate and Trustworthy: Focus on showing your Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). These are principles that Google values and factors into its “Needs Met” rating when determining what info will satisfy the search intent.

2. Use Natural Language:

• Use Words People Actually Say: Think about how people talk when they ask questions online.
• Use longer, more specific phrases that sound like real questions. For example, instead of “dog training,” use “How can I train my dog to stop barking?”
• Write Like You’re Talking to Someone: Make your content seem like a direct conversation.

3. Organize Your Content Well:

• Use Clear Headings: Break up your text with headings to make it easy to read. These are the H1-H6 tags that establish a technical hierarchy of importance for content. H1s are usually used to establish the page topic, and H2s are sub-headings, and so on.
• Use Lists: If you have lists of things, use bullet points or numbers to present the information to make it easier for people and AI to read.
• Have a key focus and clear message for every page.

4. Make Sure Your Website Works Well:

• Fast Loading: Make sure your website loads quickly.
• Easy to Use on Phones: Make sure your site design looks good, works well on phones, and responds/adjusts to any size screen.
• Implement Structured Data Markup: Utilize schema.org vocabulary (like FAQ schema, HowTo schema, Article schema, Product schema, and LocalBusiness schema) to help search and AI understand the type and purpose of your content.
• Easy to Find: Use a properly configured robots.txt file and XML sitemaps. Make sure your website is accessible to AI crawlers and search engine bots. Some crawlers/bots are already working to scrape (learn) new data, so just make sure you aren’t disallowing them access to the pages you want them to see.
  • Anthropic AI
  • Applebot-Extended
  • CCBot
  • Claude-Web
  • cohere-ai
  • FacebookBot
  • Google Extended
  • GPTBot and ChatGPT-User
  • PerplexityBot

• Don’t skimp on the descriptive metadata: Make sure you customize the metadata on each page, including title, description, keywords, image names, and alt text. It’s not content typically seen by users, but this information is visible to search and helps to tell engines what the page is about.

5. Build Your Brand Online:

AI models often pull data from public sources. You can improve visibility by:
• Get People Talking About You: When people mention your brand online, it helps you to be seen as trustworthy.
• Listing your business on Google My Business, Yelp, Wikipedia, and industry-specific directories.
• Get Good Reviews: Positive reviews on sites like Google can also help.
• Get Other Websites to Link to You: When other trusted websites link to yours, it tells search and AI you’re a good source of information.
• Publishing articles or press releases on well-known sites.

6. Keep Your Content Up-to-Date:

• Check and Update Regularly: Make sure the information on your website is current and accurate.

Getting Ready for the Future of Search

Preparing your website for regular search is essential to future visibility in AI and LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini. By making your content easy to understand and focusing on giving people the information they need and the engines the info they need, you can make sure your brand stays visible online. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.