SEO, AEO and GEO - optimising your site for Search and for AI

There is no shortage of advice on how to optimise your website for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Some of it is useful. Much of it is based on limited evidence, dressed up as certainty or designed to sell another optimisation service.

In our recent webinar, our SEO/AEO expert Michael Wignall explained how AI search finds and selects information, what has genuinely changed due to AI chatbots and where digital teams should focus their efforts.

The reassuring answer is that you probably don't need a new content strategy. Most of the things that help AI tools find and trust your content also improve conventional search and make your website more useful to people.

AI search is different, but not completely new

Traditional search engines generally present people with a list of pages. AI tools combine information from several sources into a single answer.

That changes the role your content plays. Your web page may no longer be the destination. Instead, a paragraph, list or table from it might become source material for an answer.

AI tools also need to decide which sources to trust. A page can help inform an answer without being named or linked to. To earn a citation, your content must be particularly relevant, clear and credible.

This has led to growing interest in answer engine optimisation (AEO), sometimes called generative engine optimisation (GEO). But it would be a mistake to treat this as an entirely separate discipline.

Search engines were already assessing individual passages, understanding the meaning behind questions and using structured data before generative AI became widely used. AI search builds on many of the same foundations.

Good AEO starts with good search engine optimisation (SEO).

Your content still needs to be found

Before an AI tool can use your content, it needs to find and understand it.

Many AI tools use search indexes or their own web crawlers to retrieve information. A website that cannot be crawled, indexed or read properly will also struggle to appear in AI-generated answers.

The technical basics still matter:

• Search engines and relevant AI crawlers must be able to access the site.
• Pages should use clean, semantic HTML with a logical heading structure.
• Important content should not depend entirely on JavaScript to appear.
• Redirects, canonical links and internal links should work properly.
• The site should not generate thousands of unnecessary or duplicate URLs.
• Pages should load quickly, including when an AI tool requests them directly.
• Structured data should accurately describe the organisation, page and author.

Organisations should make deliberate decisions about which AI crawlers they allow. A publisher concerned about its material being used for model training may reach a different conclusion from a council that wants public information to appear in AI answers.

The important thing is to understand the consequences. Blocking every bot during a security incident, for example, can also remove a site from search results.

Ignore shortcuts that do not solve a real problem

One of the webinar’s clearest messages was not to implement every fashionable AI optimisation technique.

Creating Markdown copies of every page or adding an llms.txt file is unlikely to improve the visibility of a conventional content website. These formats can have specific uses, such as explaining how an AI agent should interact with an online service, but they are not a replacement for accessible, well-structured web pages.

Separate versions of the same content also introduce a risk. If they fall out of sync, search engines and AI tools have to decide which version is correct.

Start by improving the website people already use before creating another layer of content to maintain.

Make your credibility clear

AI tools do not simply look for pages containing the right words. They also assess whether a source appears credible enough to use and, potentially, cite.

Google describes this through experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, commonly shortened to E-E-A-T.

For charities, councils and other mission-driven organisations, trust should already be fundamental to their content. But being a recognised organisation is not enough. Your website needs to make its credibility clear.

This means:

• Explaining clearly who your organisation is and what it does.
• Providing accurate contact and registration details.
• Naming authors and linking to useful biographies.
• Showing publication and review dates.
• Supporting claims with evidence and links to original sources.
• Dating statistics so readers know when they were accurate.
• Including first-hand knowledge, real examples and expert voices.
• Keeping privacy notices, terms and other organisational information up to date.

This is especially important for content that could affect someone’s health, safety or financial security. Councils, charities and advice organisations often publish this type of information. The consequences of inaccurate or outdated advice can be serious, so it needs particularly careful oversight.

Remove contradictory and outdated content

Imagine that your homepage says you have 7,500 members, while an older page says you have 5,000.

A person may recognise that one figure is simply out of date. An automated system has to work out which source to trust.

It may reach the right conclusion, particularly if the newer page has a clear review date. But every inconsistency creates uncertainty. If the system cannot confidently identify an accurate answer, it may choose another source.

A content audit is a sensible starting point. Look for:

• Information that is out of date.
• Content duplicated across several pages.
• Pages that have been superseded but remain available.
• Information that contradicts content elsewhere on the site.
• Content that is no longer relevant to your organisation or audience.

A smaller, well-maintained website can be more useful and authoritative than a large one filled with forgotten content.

Build depth around the subjects you know

Many websites publish one page about a broad subject and assume the topic is covered.

People rarely approach information that neatly. Someone researching ethical banking might want a definition, a comparison of accounts, information about fossil fuel investment and advice on switching banks.

These related needs form a topic cluster.

If a subject matters to your organisation and its audience, cover it in enough depth to answer the questions people actually ask. Connect the pages using clear, descriptive links. ‘See our list of disability benefits advice services’ tells readers and search systems much more than ‘Find out more’.

You can identify potential gaps by looking at:

• Queries in Google Search Console.
• Questions asked by service teams, members or customers.
• Related searches and ‘People also ask’ results.
• Your organisation’s internal data and research.
• Questions repeatedly answered through email or social media.

This does not mean producing content simply to fill space. Each page should meet a genuine need and contribute something useful.

Publish information people cannot get elsewhere

Generic content is easy to reproduce. A superficial list of tips based on secondary research may be accurate, but dozens of other websites can publish much the same thing.

AI tools can summarise this type of content without needing to cite your organisation.

Original, experience-led content is more valuable. This might include:

• Research based on your own data.
• Insights from frontline teams.
• Answers to questions asked by real users.
• Case studies showing what happened in practice.
• Interviews and first-person accounts.
• Relevant local or sector-specific context.
• Original images, diagrams or videos.

Ask what your organisation knows that cannot be found elsewhere. Councils, charities and membership organisations often hold valuable knowledge but do not think of it as publishable content.

This is the material most likely to help your audience, show what your organisation knows and give an AI tool a reason to name you as its source.

Write answers that work out of context

AI tools often retrieve passages rather than complete pages. Each important section therefore needs to make sense on its own.

Put the central answer directly beneath the relevant heading, then add explanation and evidence. Do not make readers work through several introductory paragraphs before reaching the useful information.

Clear content design helps both people and machines:

• Use descriptive questions or statements as headings.
• Put the most important information near the top.
• Keep paragraphs concise and focused on one idea.
• Use lists and tables when they make information easier to understand or compare.
• Define terms that may be unfamiliar.
• Include enough context for an extracted paragraph to remain accurate.

This is not a special writing style for robots. It is good content design for time-poor people.

Review important pages regularly

Freshness matters, but changing a date without checking the content is not a meaningful update.

A genuine review means checking the facts, figures, links and advice. The appropriate frequency depends on the subject. A key benefits page may need reviewing every few months, while a historical case study will change much less often.

Start with the pages where inaccurate information would cause the greatest harm. Give each one an owner and a realistic review schedule.

Measure visibility, not only clicks

AI answers and zero-click search results make measurement more complicated.

People may see your organisation named in an answer without visiting your website. They may then search for your name later or arrive with a clearer understanding of what you do.

Traffic remains useful, but it no longer tells the whole story. Teams may also need to consider:

• Whether the organisation appears in answers to important questions.
• Whether its content is cited as a source.
• Whether branded searches are increasing.
• Whether visitors arriving from AI tools take valuable actions.
• Whether AI tools represent the organisation accurately.

Automated prompt-tracking tools are available, but they can be expensive and results vary between searches. Establish what you genuinely need to measure before buying another platform.

Where to start

You do not need to rebuild your website or adopt every new AI optimisation tool.

Start by auditing the foundations:

• Can search engines and relevant AI crawlers access your important content?
• Is the content accurate, current and internally consistent?
• Does the site provide clear evidence of your organisation’s knowledge and experience?
• Are important topics covered in enough depth?
• Does each page answer its main question clearly?
• Are authors, sources and review dates visible?
• Does structured data accurately describe your organisation and content?

AI search will continue to change. Advice based on the current quirks of a particular tool is unlikely to age well.

Useful, original and trustworthy content is a safer investment. Make it easy to find, understand and verify. You will improve your chances of appearing in AI answers while creating a better website for the people you want to reach.

Start with one manageable step: identify your most important pages and check that they are accessible, accurate, clearly structured and supported by evidence.