How to optimise your website for AI chat GEO AIO

GEO, AIO (♩ e-i-e-i-o ♩), or making your website more AI-friendly. Whatever current acronym you call it (and excuse the Old Macdonald reference), you need to make sure your website is optimised for AI chat engines.

What's really happening with AI?

There's a lot of hype about AI, and many companies are just using the term to mean clever searches or other technical features that aren't as revolutionary as they sound. The robots aren't taking over yet, but what you need to know is that more people are using chat agents to find your products or services.

While figures vary, it is estimated that around a third of users start their web search with AI tools like Chatgpt or Google's Gemini rather than the traditional search engine, and this is growing rapidly (citation). Unsurprisingly, younger generations are driving a lot of this growth.

While Google still dominates the search market, its own embedded AI mode often appears at the top of searches. This has created a new 'zero click' phenomenon, where an estimated 60% of searches never result in a website click because the answer is provided in the AI overview (source). If your website listings are appearing under the AI overview, this means you are likely to get fewer clicks. If on the other hand you can achieve the holy grail of citation and be mentioned in the AI overview, you'll clearly get more.

While the rise in AI has been very dramatic, it's the change in user behaviour that is really impacting how you should view web marketing. People using AI chat bots are using longer, more complicated searches than they would have done with Google in the past. Where they would have searched "web design", they might now ask "how do I know who the best web design companies are in my area?".

The good thing is that these visitors have much higher intent, meaning by some estimates they are 23 times more likely to convert to an enquiry or sale than an average Google user (according to ahrefs).

What can you do to improve your GEO?

The good news is that AI should reward genuine, in-depth content talking about your area of expertise in natural language. If you're posting good content that's of interest to your visitors, you should naturally receive AI traffic. But there are ways to increase your chances.

Find your AI questions

Build a list of target sentences for your customers, rather than just short search terms. The best place to start is AI, try plugging in your domain or a list of your search terms to Google's Gemini, for example, and ask it to tell you what questions your customers are asking. Think about what people ask earlier in the process - not just searching for your services, but asking how they compare options, what are typical prices, and other learning questions. Not only is this more useful for your website, but it can capture people earlier in the process.

Think authoritativeness

AI agents (and human beings!) want to know if you're an authoritative source before they read your content. You can improve this by using blog content, key business information like your location and companies house link, credentials of individual members of your team, and so on.

Provide proof

Back up your services with third party reviews, customer testimonials that talk about their outcomes, and detailed case studies that talk about the 'how and why' rather than just a list of the services you provided. Be specific about your claims and link to other websites where it will help back up your statistic.

Use schema for AI

AI agents and search engines like 'schema', which are the labels you can use to identify different types of content as defined by Schema.org. Examples include FAQ items, local business information, products, articles and reviews. FAQ items in particular are a great way to provide both the questions people typically search, and an in-depth and authoritative answer. Don't just add the content, make sure your code includes the correct schema.

How can Bluelinemedia help with AI optimisation?

Ask us for a free audit of your website to see how you can improve things for AI agents, as well as working on the traditional areas like SEO and website conversion. We use Google tools like Google Search Console, Pagespeed Insights, and the Rich Results Test to see where you are now, and what steps you can take to do better.

Glossary of terms

GEO means Generative Engine Optimisation/Optimization. This is the 'new SEO' (search engine optimisation), the approach to making your website more likely to appear in AI searches, where a person is using something like ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini to find answers.

AIO means AI-optimisation, which is basically the same as GEO. Choose your favourite acronym!

LLM is a large language model, the actual engine that finds information and presents it in the chat agents people use.

Semantic Search Optimisation is more about the 'intent' of searches, considering more complex searches that are more likely to lead to some form of action. Instead of just saying 'web design', you might say 'How to use web design to get more sales for your business'.

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, which are the four pillars AI uses to determine the value of content. Review these key areas to see how your website could perform better both for humans and AI agents.