As we know, AI is changing how people find businesses online. Customers aren’t just searching Google anymore, they’re asking AI tools like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, or Google’s Gemini. These tools are the new search pages. Small businesses can still show up in these AI-generated answers.
You won’t see a traditional search ranking or ad, instead, your business might be mentioned when AI tools pull in examples, case studies, reviews, or locally relevant advice. These FAQs cover the basics of how small businesses can prepare their content for this AI SEO shift.
AI-SEO is a way to optimise your content for AI tools such as ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Google’s AI answers. The aim isn’t clicks, but visibility and being cited when AI summarises answers on the search pages.
Traditional SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, and ranking in Google and other search pages for ranking purposes. AI-SEO is more about:
Keep it simple. Use FAQs, headings, bullet lists, and comparison tables. AI tools prefer well-organised content that’s easy to summarise. Your customers are using AI tools to research services, products, compare providers, and get recommendations. If your business isn’t visible in these answers, you’re missing opportunities to new clients and customers.
No, they work together. Google search is still huge but AI-SEO is about preparing your content for both search engines and AI summarisation.
Yes! You don’t need to be a big brand. Small businesses can appear in AI answers if the content is specific, practical, and locally relevant. Sharing authentic stories or case studies helps too.
Start by publishing helpful content on your own site. Then, place articles or reviews on trusted third-party platforms, industry directories, local business forums, and community blogs. AI tools crawl these sources more often.
AI-SEO isn’t instant. Think in months, not weeks. Over time, as AI tools update their training and indexing, your structured content has a better chance of being included, however you do need to continue updating your website and keeping it current and structured for the human eye.
EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s how search engines and AI tools judge whether your content is reliable. For small businesses, this means: