How do I do my own AI SEO Optimisation?
Here's the thing. If you know traditional SEO, you are well on the path to knowing how to do AI SEO yourself.
AI SEO is not a replacement for search engine optimisation. As our complete guide to AI SEO explains, it applies established SEO practices to visibility across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot and other answer systems.
Step 1: Define the searches that matter
Begin with the products, services and locations that generate valuable enquiries. List the questions customers ask before choosing, buying or contacting a provider.
Include informational, comparison and commercial prompts, such as:
- What is the service?
- Which option suits a particular situation?
- How much does it cost?
- Which providers operate locally?
- What should someone check before choosing?
Prioritise questions connected to real business outcomes rather than chasing every AI-related keyword.
Step 2: Record your current visibility
Test a fixed group of prompts across Google, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity where relevant. Record whether your brand appears, which competitors are mentioned and which pages are cited.
Our article explaining why competitors appear more in AI-generated answers shows what to compare when reviewing the results.
Step 3: Check technical access
Important pages must be crawlable, indexable and internally linked. Review robots.txt rules, canonical tags, status codes, JavaScript rendering, XML sitemaps and accidental noindex directives.
Different systems use different crawlers. OpenAI states that OAI-SearchBot is used for ChatGPT search, while GPTBot controls a separate training use. Check firewall and CDN settings because crawlers can be blocked before reaching the website.
Step 4: Improve existing priority pages
You rarely need to begin by publishing hundreds of new articles. Start with pages that already rank, earn impressions or support valuable services.
Make the main answer clear near the beginning, then add the explanation, evidence and examples required to support it. Use descriptive headings, concise paragraphs, relevant terminology and natural internal links.
Reviewing how Google chooses AI Overview sources can help distinguish source eligibility from guaranteed selection.
Step 5: Strengthen entities and evidence
Describe the organisation, services, locations and people consistently across the website and trusted external profiles. Add genuine author information, first-hand examples, original observations and reliable references where they improve the answer.
Do not manufacture reviews, statistics, citations or brand mentions. AI visibility depends partly on whether claims can be understood and corroborated, not simply how often a target phrase appears.
Step 6: Create content for genuine gaps
Map each unanswered question to the most suitable existing or new page. Avoid creating several articles with nearly identical intent.
A strong page should provide a direct response, useful detail and something distinctive: experience, data, examples, comparisons or a clear process. Google’s official generative AI search guidance recommends valuable, non-commodity content rather than special AI markup or artificial content “chunking”.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need special schema for AI SEO?+
No special schema guarantees inclusion in an AI-generated answer. Use structured data when it accurately represents visible page content and qualifies the page for a relevant search feature. Organisation, person, article, product or local-business markup may improve clarity, but it cannot replace useful content, crawlability, authority or conventional SEO foundations.
Can I use AI to write all my SEO content?+
AI can accelerate research, outlines and first drafts, but unverified automated publishing creates factual, repetitive and quality risks. Human experts should check every important claim, add experience and ensure the page satisfies a genuine user need. Producing more pages is not automatically better, particularly when several URLs target the same search intent.
How quickly can AI SEO produce results?+
There is no universal timeframe. Existing authoritative pages may gain visibility after focused improvements and recrawling, while new websites often need longer to establish coverage and trust. Measure progress over several months using a consistent prompt set, organic-search data and commercial outcomes. Treat isolated citations as useful observations rather than guaranteed permanent positions.
Step 7: Measure and improve
Track citations and brand mentions alongside conventional rankings, impressions, clicks, engaged visits, enquiries and sales. AI answers change, so one successful test is not proof of stable visibility.
Review which passages are selected, which sources keep appearing and where customer questions remain unanswered. Update pages when facts change and improve weak content instead of constantly adding new URLs.
Businesses needing support across research, technical SEO, content and measurement can use professional AI SEO services to turn these steps into a prioritised programme.
Related reading
What is AI SEO and how can it improve your visibility?
AI SEO means two things: using AI to do SEO better, and optimising to be visible inside AI search. Here is how to do both well.
How to Use AI for On-Page SEO
Use AI to improve on-page SEO research, titles, headings, semantic coverage and internal links without sacrificing accuracy or subject-matter expertise.