“How do I get my business to show up on AI?” It’s a question we get just about every week now at Cassandra Bryan Design — and for good reason. Even when our clients aren’t using AI chatbots or searches, many of their customers are.
Here’s what we know (so far) about showing up in AI results, and how we’re helping brands do that.
Optimizing your website and online presence to show up in search engine results (Google, Bing, etc.)
Optimizing your content to show up as a short, direct answer for voice assistants, Google Featured Snippets, People Also Ask boxes, and other AI-generated answers to specific questions.
Optimizing your content to show up in generative AI chat tool responses (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, etc.), Google AI Overviews and other AI answer engines. These responses typically pull from multiple sources to create longer, more in-depth answers.
When people ask us “how do I show up in AI?” this is usually what they mean.
Here’s the thing — there aren’t industry-wide best practices or benchmarks for AI discoverability yet. We’re learning along with everyone else!
What we can share from our own results and research is that the tried-and-true best practices for user experience (UX), accessibility and SEO still work. Even better, they serve the actual humans using your website — not just the bots scanning it.
We’ll go into those best practices now.
AI seems to prefer websites made by humans. (And unlike the examples in the Alanis song, that actually is ironic.)
Here’s how the humans at Cassandra Bryan Design write, design and develop AI-friendly websites across several key areas.
“Copy” is the written content on your website. And even though an estimated 10% of webpages show signs of AI authorship, AI engines consistently serve up unique, human-written results. (If you wonder why your AI searches turn up blog posts from 2014, that might be why.)
There are a few theories about this:
What we do know for certain is that AI writing is … verbose. Most people in the U.S. read at a 6th grade level or lower. They aren’t going to read all that fluff and, surprisingly, the bot crawlers that seek out information for AI results don’t want to read all that, either.
Our website copywriting delivers:
How you organize your website navigation and the information on each page significantly impacts the user experience, accessibility and SEO results.
It impacts AI findability as well!
Our copywriters and designers collaborate on seamless page layouts that guide users to what they need. Behind the scenes, developers build a logical architecture with HTML tags and correct markup.
We encourage most clients to include genuine photography of their people, workplaces and projects rather than or in addition to stock photos. Our creative team partners with trusted photographers on photoshoots, coordinating the process for our clients.
We recommend this because people buy from people they like and trust, and nothing conveys that quite like real photos. And — bonus! — it turns out that AI engines like real photos, too.
Here’s why
We also include descriptive filenames and ALT text on images to give them context. This helps traditional and AI search engines understand what you do.
Schema is behind-the-scenes code that delivers crucial information to search and AI engines. It essentially labels a piece of information, making it easier to extract.
Examples of schema markup include:
AI tools (and website templates, for that matter) tend to create unnecessary code. This “code bloat” slows your site and makes it harder for bot crawlers to read.
Search and AI bots have nanoseconds to scan a page. If they have to hack through thickets of dense code just to find your services and contact information, they might just skip off to clearer pastures.
Our developers code for:
Showing up in AI results requires optimizing not just your website, but your entire online footprint.
That’s true for SEO, too — GEO just makes it more obvious. If you ask Google AI or a chatbot about your brand, you’ll likely see citations from your website, social media accounts, reviews, news stories and more.
What’s also different is that AI tools actually recommend services and products, rather than producing a list of links like a Google search. And even though they make (a lot) of mistakes, AI chatbots and search tools need to produce trustworthy answers if they want people to keep using them.
So how do they decide what’s good? The same way Google’s search algorithm has for years now: a principle called E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness).
If you want to show up in AI results, you need to position yourself not only as a trusted brand, but as a trusted authority on a topic (your services, products and/or industry).
Here are ways to do that, either DIY or in partnership with the Cassandra Bryan Design digital marketing team.
Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds! You want to find out what the most-used AI tools say about your brand.
If you have access to AI visibility tools (maybe as part of an SEO tracking platform), use them. If not, try as many chatbots and AI search platforms as you can access. Ask your team to use their favorites, and be sure to check the Google search results page for AI overviews, too.
If you need some prompts, try:
Note the sources (called “citations”) each tool pulls answers from. Can’t find them? Ask the AI to cite its sources. If you see mistakes in the answers, you can reference the citations to track down the source and correct it.
A personal example: When Google AI repeatedly told us that Cassandra Bryan Design specializes in e-commerce sites (which we don’t do anymore), we traced the source to a rogue bullet point on an outdated LinkedIn profile. Problem solved!
Be aware, though, that AI sometimes “hallucinates.” That is, it simply … makes things up. Some sources are also out of your control, like legitimate reviews.
Do your best and fix what you can. AI engines look for consistency across owned (website, social media) and third-party sources (reviews, news stories) when evaluating your E-E-A-T.
Using the same AI tools as your brand audit, see whether you come up for your core products and services. Put yourself in your prospective customers’ shoes and use the phrases they would.
Here are some example prompts:
Include your location or service area. Even if you serve customers nationwide, you’re unlikely to come up in general prompts unless you’re a niche and/or highly established national brand.
If you come up in the answers, great — but don’t rest on your laurels quite yet. Keep testing over the weeks and months. Sources change frequently.
If you don’t show up, reference the citations for the brands that do appear. If they’re legitimate competitors of yours, use the citations to learn where they are, but you aren’t.
Apply what you find out to prioritize the action items below.
AI responses often reference reviews. It stands to reason that if other humans like (or dislike) a product or service, you might, too!
No matter what AI does, you can’t go wrong prioritizing reviews. They influence buyer decisions in nearly every industry and are the key factor in many.
How do you get reviews? Ask! For service industries, consider automated text-based tools that prompt customers to leave a review at the time of service.
Your website is the central source of truth for your online presence. Make sure it’s accurate, especially when you add or discontinue services and products.
WordPress websites from Cassandra Bryan Design are made for easy updates by non-coders. If your current website is difficult or even impossible to update, contact us for a quote!
We’re seeing AI tools reference social media often, at least right now. AI models want fresh content, and social media is a steady source.
Post regularly about your services, answer customer questions, and keep your profiles up to date. Prioritize the social platforms your customers actually use. With so many platforms out there, you simply can’t chase down every single potential citation.
Everything old is new again! Once a staple SEO tactic, directories became less important except in specific industries.
Imagine our surprise when we started seeing them listed as sources in AI results! AI engines tend to reference directories in “best [service type]” answers.
Here’s how to proceed:
Both humans and AI bots love the question-and-answer format. Here are ways to work FAQs into your site:
What questions should you answer? Ask your public-facing team members — they know better than anyone what customers want to know! You can also reference the People Also Ask questions on Google or try a tool like AnswerThePublic.
Publish articles on your website regularly. SEO, GEO, AEO and good ol’ humans love something new.
But…
Don’t churn out the same thing as everybody, their brother and their chatbot. It won’t show up, and no one will read it. To perform well with humans and AI, you need content that stands out.
You don’t have to be a research firm to pull this off. You can:
Press releases are another option to consider. You can publish them on your own website, but distribution offers opportunities for pickups on reputable news sites. That’s a great way to build your E-E-A-T and your visibility.
It’s been true for SEO, and it’s true for AEO, GEO and E-I-E-I-O.
The sources AI engines pull from are changing all the time. It might be tempting to churn out fast content to try to show up everywhere, but we don’t recommend it. We’ve seen this approach backfire in the past with SEO.
Those of us who have been in the business a long time remember Google’s 2011 Panda algorithm update, aimed at reducing low-quality content in search results. Companies that relied on a “flood the zone” approach saw their rankings disappear nearly overnight and spent months cleaning up duplicate and low-quality pages.
We suspect that, as AI models develop, they will also get better at prioritizing high-quality sources. Before you invest your time, talent or tokens into creating a new piece of content, consider its purpose.
Is it helpful? Is it informative? Is it worth the time to read, watch, or listen to?
When you put the human first, you can’t go wrong.
This article is 100% human-written with some AI assistance for research. Yes, we use em dashes.
