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Thanks to the growth of AI search and chatbots, the way people navigate the internet is changing. Even if you’re not personally a user of AI search, if you have a website, it can impact your overall visibility online and your ability to build a following or attract site visitors.
On top of traditional SEO, understanding how AI search works and how to show up in AI responses will give you a competitive edge. Here’s everything you need to know about how AI SEO works and how to optimize for it.
What is AI SEO or AIO?
AI SEO refers to tactics you can use to optimize your website to be understood and displayed in search results or citations on platforms like Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. Whereas the goal of SEO is ranking higher in search engine results, AI optimization (AIO) is about making your website visible in AI chat responses or AI Overview summaries.
Since this is an evolving space, you may also see AIO referred to as GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization), and LLMO (large language model optimization), among other terms.
AIO and SEO rely on some of the same factors to surface results, like trustworthiness and helpfulness, but how these tools gather those signals can differ, and AI search results can vary from search to search much more than traditional search engine rankings.
How does AI search work?
AI, like search engines, “crawl” websites across the internet to get an understanding of their content and what types of topics it might be relevant to. Instead of matching results to a keyword, like traditional search, AI attempts to return a custom, nuanced response to your unique query, taking into account your intent and circumstances.
Responses vary across platforms, and if you search the same thing multiple times, you’ll often get different results. That offers more opportunities for your website to appear, but also creates more possible searches to optimize your website for.
Read our beginner’s guide to AI search
Types of AI search results
How websites appear in AI search results depend on the platform you’re using to search and the type of search you’re doing. This is a simplified overview of how your website might appear in AI responses.
Direct answers: These are what you get from tools like Google AI Overviews, where AI delivers a response summarizing many sources, with source websites cited.
Featured sources: These are websites explicitly cited by AI tools and featured prominently in the response or search results.
Conversational recommendations: These are personalized suggestions given through AI chatbots, like recommended businesses or products.
Knowing how you can appear in results and how AI tools choose content will help you to tailor your site for improved visibility and increased traffic.
AI visibility vs. traffic
Before you prepare your site for AIO, set clear, measurable goals. For AIO, that’ll likely be visibility or website traffic. Visibility can grow awareness and recognition for your brand, while direct traffic is more likely to convert into customers or followers. Setting goals for each will help you choose which strategies to pursue.
However, make sure you’re setting realistic goals. Unlike traditional SEO, one effect of AI search is that it can make your website much more visible without bringing more traffic to your website. Because searchers are getting their answer from a summary or chatbot, they may not feel the need to click through to your website. Consider setting a more conservative traffic goal or setting a baseline to compare to before you start any AIO work.
6 ways to prepare your site for AIO
The Squarespace team is doing its own research on AIO and closely monitoring industry discussion to bring you the best information possible. However, as AI frequently changes, best practices and research in the AIO space is always evolving.
Right now, it seems like many of the factors that influence SEO also impact AIO, with some nuances.
Brand recognition and links
Clear, structured website pages
Helpful, detailed content
Recency of your website content
1. Make sure you’re letting AI crawl your website
Like traditional search engines, AI needs to crawl your website if you want it to appear in search responses. A crawl is essentially an exploration of your website by a bot. These bots gather an understanding of your website through your copy, page titles, and link structure.
If you’re using a website builder like Squarespace, you may already be allowing bots to crawl your website. But before you start any AIO work, it’s worth checking your settings so your changes don’t go unnoticed.
Learn how to enable or disable AI crawlers on Squarespace
2. Structure pages clearly
How you lay out the content on your website tells AI how to read what’s on the page. For example, in this article, the title is a H1 heading, whereas “6 ways to prepare your site for AIO” is a H2 heading, and “Structure pages clearly” is a H3 heading. The H1 is the highest-level summary of what’s on the page, the H2 is a sub-topic of the title, and the H3 relates to the H2 above it. Make sure you assign headings to your website copy with that structure in mind.
Structure extends beyond headings, too. If you’re sharing information, like in an FAQ or biography, make sure you’re putting the most important information first. For example, if the first line on your bio page starts with something like, “When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a dancer. While that didn’t happen, I did eventually find my way into the arts.” A better-optimized version might start with a heading that says, “Multidisciplinary artist and photographer, rooted in Brooklyn’s nightlife community,” before expanding into your more personalized biography.
3. Keep your website updated
Some AIO studies have found that AI search responses tend to prioritize citing websites that are recently updated. The assumption is that a more recently updated website will have the most accurate information on a topic.
That doesn’t mean you need to update your website constantly or make updates for the sake of updating them. But it’s worth setting a monthly reminder to check your website for any maintenance needs, like news and portfolio updates or simple corrections.
4. Build your brand
Some research suggests that a strong, regularly referenced brand makes your website more likely to be cited in AI overviews and chatbot responses. This is similar to the way traditional search tends to prioritize recognizable brands, because they’re more likely to give trustworthy information to searchers.
You can work on building these brand trust signals by getting mentioned in news sources, partnering with other well-known figures or brands, creating interesting marketing campaigns, or publishing original content.
5. Encourage third-party mentions
Similar to the above, getting mentioned by other people or on other websites AI trusts can help grow your AIO authority too.
This might include:
Partnering with other businesses to create content, like event vendors shouting each other out in social media or blog posts
Asking followers to share about you on social media or forums like Reddit and Quora
Encouraging reviews and testimonials from clients or customers
Participating in industry discussions online or at in-person events
6. Share helpful, unique content
As is the case in traditional SEO, publishing relevant, authoritative content on your website will position your site as a trustworthy source. The goal of any search platform is ultimately to provide the most helpful possible result to the person searching.
This content can be blog posts or FAQ sections that are conversational and easy to skim, like comparisons, clear answer responses, or bulleted lists.
As you review your website for AIO opportunities, ask yourself: What would someone get out of coming to my website? Can I make that clearer or easier to achieve? Clear, straightforward answers can help to boost your visibility in AI-generated results.
AIO is a developing practice, so best practices may change over time. You can find our newest content in our AIO hub and trust Squarespace to keep blogs updated as information changes.