It was a pleasure and also a great personal challenge to speak at City of Sydney‘s reboot conference this week on the topic of AI optimisation. With almost 250 attendees that is the largest group I’ve ever presented to! We ran over some great ways to get your website shown in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot etc. If you missed the presentation, send me a direct message and I can share the key slides that contain hacks on fast tracking your AI web presence.
What’s going on with AI search, and does your website still matter?
I was talking on a City of Sydney panel last Wednesday (with 700 attendees!). When we were done, an attendee who runs a small landscaping business in Western Sydney contacted me and asked, “Mate, is the website even worth it anymore?” He had seen the news. This and that about AI and ChatGPT. “The traffic is messed up for everyone. What is the point?” he asked.
No, look. It is still worth it.
A lot more than before. Not for the same reasons as before, though.
A quick background. Gartner said that by 2028, branded organic traffic would have dropped by 50%. Some people think more. Some think less. Nobody really knows. What we do know is that people are no longer searching for “plumber Newtown” on Google. They’re typing, or rather asking, ChatGPT something like, ‘Hot water has been making a strange ticking noise since Sunday’. Is there anyone in the Inner West who can come tonight? I’m waiting for it to spit out two or three names.
You want to be one of those people.
That’s what the game is all about now. That’s it.
How do you get on that list?
There is a name going around. AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. Sorry, but that acronym is terrible. The idea is to make your website content so that the AIs can grab them, summarise them, and recommend you by name.
The truth is that about 60% of it is the same as regular old SEO. Quick site. Good content. Reviews. Links back. The boring basics that everyone has been talking about for fifteen years. It still works. Perhaps more than ever.
The type of content the AIs rely on is what’s new. They like:
- Real FAQs, not the short ones from 2014
- “X vs. Y” and “best Z for [weird scenario]”
- Listicles, which is strange. Five, ten, and all that – Long, chatty answers to very specific, somewhat strange questions.
One of our clients sells driveway ramps. It’s a niche market. Their main product page has all the specs, angles, weight ratings, frequently asked questions, side-on photos, and installation diagrams. ChatGPT is a big fan. When people ask, the AI always names this ramp first. It took two weeks to make that page look right. For two years now, I’ve been quietly winning business.
What to do this week for real
In this order:
- Add more pages. The most common number of pages I see is ten. They require 50. Pages for services. Pages for the suburbs. Pages for different situations. Get the things out of your head.
- Make sure your FAQs are clear. Let your receptionist take charge. Find out why people are calling. That’s enough material for a whole year.
- Schema for frequently asked questions. A developer who is only okay at their job can do this in five minutes. It shows the AIs where to find the questions.
- Quickness. Check the speed of your homepage with PageSpeed Insights. If your mobile score is below 50, you have bigger problems than AI search.
- Comments. Please ask. Ask again then. No one gives one. They are more important now than they have ever been.
The question about AI content (you knew it was coming)
Yes, I understand. You could write 100 blogs in one weekend with ChatGPT. Don’t do it. Or, in a way, don’t. The AIs can smell their own poop. So does Google. Been on it since the beginning of 2024.
The most important thing is to use AI as a writing partner, not as a ghostwriter. Write the bones in your own voice. Give the AI some time to clean up and stretch. Then read it again and ask yourself the most important question: does this sound like me, or does it sound like every other SEO blog from here to Brisbane?
If it’s the second one, get rid of it. Start over.
Last thing: No one knows what search will look like in five years. It could be voice agents. AI might be the one doing your shopping. Maybe it’s something that hasn’t even been made yet.
What we do know is that the companies that do the boring basics keep coming back when the rules change. They were there for mobile-first in 2015. They were there when AI Overview was first released. They’ll be there again next time.
That’s the whole thing. Honestly, it’s a pretty good one.
Call Search Rescue if you need help with any of this. No contracts, no nonsense. We’ll be honest with you if you don’t really need our help.
