How to Optimise Your Website for AI Search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews)

To optimise for AI search, publish answer-first pages with clear headings, tables, schema markup, and fresh server-rendered content that AI tools can confidently cite.

AI search optimisation (often called AEO) isn’t about “tricking the algorithm”. It’s about making your site the easiest source for an answer engine to understand, trust, and quote. When someone asks ChatGPT a question, they don’t get ten blue links — they get a single synthesised answer with a handful of citations. Your job is to become one of those citations.

This guide walks through a practical, step-by-step approach you can apply to a single page first (then scale across your site). It’s written for Australian businesses, but the tactics apply globally.

What does “optimising for AI search” actually mean?

Optimising for AI search means designing your pages so an answer engine can extract a clean answer without guessing. That’s a different goal to classic SEO, which is mostly about rankings and clicks.

In practice, AEO means your content has three qualities:

1. Extractable: the answer is written clearly, early, and in self-contained chunks.
2. Structured: headings are predictable, tables and FAQs are easy to parse, and schema markup makes meaning explicit.
3. Trustworthy: the page demonstrates expertise with specifics (tools, numbers, dates, locations), and it’s kept up to date.

You don’t need to rebuild your site. Start with one high-value page (a service page or a cornerstone guide), optimise it for extractability, then repeat the pattern. The compounding effect comes from consistency: once your site becomes a “library of good answers”, you become easier to cite.

What should you do before you change anything?

Before you touch content, get your baseline. Otherwise you’ll “optimise” forever and still have no idea what moved the needle.

Create a simple tracking doc with:

• 10–20 customer questions you want to own (the exact queries people ask)
• The current AI results for each query (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews)
• Whether your brand is cited, and which URL (if any)
• The snippet AI pulls (this tells you what it found “quote-worthy”)

Also check your fundamentals:

• Your important pages are indexable (not blocked by noindex or robots rules)
• Your site loads reasonably fast on mobile
• Your content is accessible in the page source (not hidden behind client-only rendering)

This takes 30–60 minutes and gives you a clear “before vs after” story you can measure.

How do you audit your current AI visibility?

Run the same small set of queries in three places:

• ChatGPT (recommendation + “what is” questions)
• Perplexity (research-style questions; it tends to cite more sources)
• Google (queries that trigger AI Overviews, often informational)

Use queries that match real intent, like:

• “What is AEO and how does it work?”
• “SEO vs AEO — do I need both?”
• “How much does a website cost in Australia?”
• “[Your service] for small business Sydney”

Then record:

• Are you cited?
• If yes, which page is cited?
• What wording is extracted?

If AI cites a competitor, open their page and look for patterns: answer-first intro, clear H2 questions, a table, FAQs, visible schema, and recently updated content. You’re not copying — you’re reverse-engineering the formatting that makes citations easy.

How do you structure pages so AI can extract answers?

Most AEO wins come from structure, not word count. Your goal is to write in “quotable blocks”.

Use this checklist:

A simple pattern that works: Question H2 → direct answer paragraph → supporting detail → table/steps → mini takeaway. If a section can’t stand alone without the previous section, rewrite it until it can.

How do you add structured data (schema markup)?

Schema markup is the “label maker” for your content. It doesn’t guarantee citations, but it reduces ambiguity for machines.

For most business sites, start with:

• Article schema on blog posts
• FAQPage schema on pages with FAQs
• LocalBusiness / ProfessionalService schema on your homepage (and location pages)

Here’s a minimal FAQPage JSON-LD example:

json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What is AEO?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is the practice of structuring content so AI platforms can extract and cite it as a direct answer."
      }
    }
  ]
}

Important rules:

• The visible FAQ text must match the schema answers.
• Don’t mark up fake FAQs. Keep it honest and useful.
• Validate with Google’s Rich Results Test before shipping.

How do you handle AI crawlers and robots.txt safely?

If the bots can’t access your pages, they can’t cite them. But not all bots do the same thing, and some are for training while others are for search/indexing or user-triggered fetching.

A practical approach is to decide what you want:

• Allow search/indexing bots (so your content can be discovered for answers)
• Decide separately whether to allow training crawlers

Common examples (always verify current names for your setup):

• OpenAI: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot (plus user-triggered fetchers)
• Perplexity: PerplexityBot (and user-triggered fetchers)
• Anthropic: ClaudeBot

A simple robots.txt pattern (example only):

txt
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

Two important caveats:

• Robots.txt is a policy, not a forcefield. Some fetches are user-triggered and behave differently.
• If you block everything at the CDN/WAF, bots may never reach your content even if robots.txt allows it.

If you’re unsure, start by allowing discovery bots on your public blog content, and reassess later.

How do you build entity-rich, fact-dense content?

AI engines prefer content that feels concrete. “We help businesses grow” is fluff. “We implement GA4 + GTM with event tracking for form submissions and button clicks” is a usable answer.

To increase entity richness:

• Use exact product names (Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights – Journeys)
• Use dates (February 2026, Q2 2025)
• Use numbers (pricing ranges, thresholds, benchmarks)
• Use locations where relevant (Sydney, NSW, Australia)
• Use definitions that don’t rely on context

A quick writing test: if you copy-paste a paragraph into a blank document, does it still make sense? If yes, it’s self-contained. If it contains “this”, “that”, “it”, “these tools”, without clear referents, rewrite until it’s specific.

How do you keep content fresh without rewriting everything?

Freshness is an AEO advantage because answer engines tend to prioritise up-to-date pages, especially for tools, pricing, and platforms that change quickly.

Use a lightweight 90-day refresh cycle for your top pages:

Don’t “touch the date” and call it a refresh. Make at least one meaningful improvement per cycle. Over a year, those small changes turn one page into the best answer in your niche.

How do you measure AI visibility and citations?

AEO measurement is simple at the start: track whether you’re cited for the questions you care about, then track what happens after users click.

Set up:

• A monthly AI query log (10–20 target questions)
• A record of cited URLs and extracted snippets
• GA4 tracking for AI referrals

Here’s a practical measurement table:

Don’t overcomplicate it. Consistency beats fancy dashboards.

Troubleshooting: why you’re not getting cited

Your best content isn’t visible in the page source

If key sections load client-side only, some crawlers won’t see them. Ensure your answer capsule, FAQs, and tables are server-rendered HTML.

Your page doesn’t answer a clear question

If the page is a generic “services overview”, AI won’t know what to cite it for. Add question-shaped H2s and direct answers.

You’re missing structure

No table, no FAQs, no clear headings = fewer extractable chunks. Add structure before adding more words.

Your content is too vague

Add entities: tools, dates, pricing, locations, thresholds, real steps. Make it quotable.

You aren’t updating anything

If your competitor refreshed their content last month and yours hasn’t changed in a year, you’ve handed them an easy win.

Key takeaways

• AI search rewards extractable structure, not just “long content”
• Put a direct answer early, then support it with sections, tables, and FAQs
• Use schema markup to reduce ambiguity and improve machine readability
• Make sure key content is server-rendered and visible in the page source
• Refresh important pages every 90 days to stay citation-competitive
• Measure success by citations, snippets, and AI referral conversions