some simple ideas to rank higher in AI search

In this email I want to talk about how we’re optimizing for AI search results and a simple technique to get more traffic from ChatGPT and other AI search results.

Some Simple Ideas To Rank Higher in AI search results

There’s no denying or escaping the fact that AI is here and Google search results are essentially AI results now. The old ranking number 1 in Google is now a game of getting the site surfaced in AI results.

I had this discussion with a small business customer that is a gym in the rich area. The gym is quite expensive compared to other nearby gyms and is in a tourist area so attracts a lot of people traveling.

With the rise of AI, searcher behaviour has changed for some types of queries (not all)

For example – pre AI, someone might search “gym near me” or “gym SUBURB”

They then process and filter the search results to match their detailed and unspoken intent, go to a few of the websites and then decide what to do or who to call/email etc.

In the new AI world, that unspoken intent is now the question put to AI tools – the search becomes “find me a gym near me with concept 2 rowers” or “find me a gym in sydney CBD that is open at 6am tomorrow”

AI then searches its own index, it might go to Google or another search index (we talked about Bing in a previous emails) to do the search, does the processing and filtering and then presents a short list of recommendations.

This means that in order to be eligible to show in the results for these searches, the website and key online assets for this gym needs to be more specific, more accurate and more detailed than ever before.

With our gym customer, they have a ton of high quality, name brand equipment that other cheaper gyms don’t have. They already rank number 1 for most gym+suburb terms for traditional search results so our recommendation was to add a detailed list of equipment and equipment photos to the website.

That way, when someone who’s big into fitness or bodybuilding and traveling is making that specific search in Google or other AI, they will be surfaced for that type of search.

I gave the similar advice to a photography client too:

For example, pre AI, someone might search “jewellery photographer” or “ecommerce jewellery photographer” or “wine bottle photographer”

They then process and filter the search results to match their detailed and unspoken intent and then decide what to do or who to call/email etc.

In the new AI world, that unspoken intent is now the question put to AI tools – the search becomes “find me a wine bottle photographer in sydney to take photos of my red wine bottles for my website”

AI then does all the searching and filtering and provides a condensed list.

In this case, fattening out the portfolio part of the website was the key to ranking in LLMs for these very specific terms.

—

So, what this means in terms of practical action steps for you:

Keep your maps listings up to date
-if you’re a physical business, you need to ensure your maps listings (Google, Apple, Bing) are up to date particularly with open hours so LLMs are providing accurate times to customers. Make sure you’re using the holiday hours fields too so if opening hours are different it’s immediately evidence

Get specific with the details
Be detailed with your content, e.g. if you’re a plumber, on your “hot water repair” page, list out all the different brands you work with, even if you work with all brands. That way when someone searches “bosch hot water system repair”, you’re more likely to appear

Use Portfolio Pages or “Recent Work” pages
Particularly for photography businesses or any business that builds or makes things, portfolio and “recent work” style pages are an easy way to insert highly relevant technical language into your website that otherwise won’t fit elsewhere on the site.

Add a Reviews page to your site
Collate all your online reviews onto a single page on your website and ideally wrap the reviews in schema markup. This way AI search tools can get real natural language input from your review customers to help guide the results there.

Use Youtube!
We see so many sites using Vimeo or simple video file embeds on the site. That isn’t a problem but Youtube gets special treatment from Google and other LLMs. They crawl the videos, transcribe them and right now Google favors video search results so if you’re doing anything with video, make sure you’re mirroring that onto a Youtube channel and make sure the titles are relevant and keyword-ish targeted.

Add a “Get Started” page to your site explaining your onboarding process
Again this one is important because LLMs will feed a searcher a version of this and all things being equal, if you have a simple “to get started, do 1-2-3” and your competitor doesn’t, LLMs will lean towards recommending you over the competitor.

---

Thats it for this email, any questions, just hit reply – if you’re stuck with site speed or need help with SEO, email me back with some background on the problem you’re looking to solve and we can send over some recommendations.