How to Get Your Website Into AI Answers

The short answer

More people now skip the search results and ask an AI tool directly: "Who's a good brand designer in Cape Town?" or "What should a small business website include?" The tool searches the web, reads a handful of pages, and writes an answer. Your goal is to be one of the pages it reads and trusts enough to mention.

This is sometimes called AEO (answer engine optimisation) or GEO (generative engine optimisation). Most of it is good SEO done properly, with a few extra checks.

1. Make sure AI tools can actually read your site

Many modern websites, including a lot built with React or similar frameworks, load their content with JavaScript after the page opens. People never notice. Many AI crawlers do, because they read the raw page and never run the JavaScript, so they see a nearly empty page.

Check two things:

• Your content is in the HTML. Ask your developer whether pages are prerendered or server-rendered. If they aren't, that's the first fix.
• You're not blocking AI crawlers. Your robots.txt file shouldn't block crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot unless you've decided to.

2. Answer the question in the first few lines

AI tools quote clear, self-contained answers. A page that opens with three paragraphs of scene-setting is harder to quote than one that answers the question straight away and then explains.

Write each important page so its first two sentences could stand alone as the answer. Use headings phrased the way people ask questions, and add a short FAQ where it genuinely helps.

3. Describe your business the same way everywhere

AI tools cross-check. If your website says "brand studio", LinkedIn says "marketing consultant" and your Google Business Profile lists a different suburb, the tool is less sure who you are, and less likely to recommend you.

Use the same business name, one-line description, location and services across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, social profiles and any directories you're listed in.

4. Add structured data

Structured data (schema markup) is code that tells search engines and AI tools, in a format they don't have to guess at, what a page is about: this is a person, this is the business they run, this article was written by them on this date.

At minimum, a small business site should describe the business, its founder, its location, its articles and its FAQs. It's invisible to visitors and takes a developer a few hours.

5. Get mentioned beyond your own website

AI answers lean heavily on what other sites say about you. A business that only describes itself on its own website is easy to overlook.

Useful places to start: a Google Business Profile with genuine reviews, credits on client websites you've built, industry directories, and guest articles or interviews. One credible mention on another site often does more than another post on your own blog.

6. Show your sources

AI tools are increasingly cautious about unsupported claims. Statistics with no source, vague "studies show" lines and inflated promises make a page less trustworthy, to people and machines alike. Use real examples from your own work, and link to the original source when you cite a figure.

AI is changing how people find businesses, but the principle hasn't changed: be clear, be consistent, be useful. More on how AI is reshaping creative work in AI in the creative industry.

A quick self-check

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the question your ideal client would ask, such as "Who designs websites for small businesses in Cape Town?" Note who gets mentioned and which sources are cited. Then look at what those sources do that your site doesn't. If you're planning a rebuild anyway, add these checks to your website redesign checklist.

FAQs