The factors that make your website show up in AI results are slightly different from classic SEO, but they overlap. Here’s the breakdown:
1. Strong Traditional SEO (Still the Foundation)
- Indexation & Crawlability: If search engines can’t crawl or index your site, AI tools won’t see it.
- Authority & Backlinks: High-quality backlinks still influence what content gets considered trustworthy.
- Content Depth & Relevance: AI models often pull from sites that rank well on Google — so strong SEO is step one.
2. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)
- AI tools weigh who is writing, why they’re credible, and how trustworthy the site is.
- Author bios, references, transparent sourcing, and external validation (mentions in reputable sources) make your site more “AI-citable.”
- Medical, legal, or financial content is especially sensitive — showing expert credentials and updated info is key.
3. Structured Content That AI Can Parse
- Clear formatting (H1, H2, H3, tables, FAQs, step-by-step guides). AI models summarise structured, scannable content more easily.
- Schema markup (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Organization, Author). Schema helps AI tools understand context and relationships.
- Lists, comparisons, definitions. AI favours pages that answer questions in a straightforward way.
4. AI Citations & LLM Readiness
- AI tools increasingly cite their sources (Perplexity, Claude, Bing Copilot do this already).
- To get cited, your content must be:
- Credible: with references, stats, and outbound links to trusted sources.
- Unique: not just rehashed, but original insights, data, or case studies.
- AI-friendly: consistent wording, question-based subheadings, and summaries that directly answer queries.
5. Topical Authority & Depth
- Instead of just ranking one page, AI prefers sites that show breadth + depth on a subject.
- Example: If you want ChatGPT to show your page for “document scanning services South Africa,” your site should have:
- Service page + blogs (e.g., compliance, pricing, benefits).
- Guides (e.g., POPIA compliance checklists).
- Case studies (e.g., industries using scanning).
- This builds a topic cluster that signals authority to both Google and AI models.
6. Freshness & Updating
- AI models increasingly rely on fresh content pipelines (Bing Copilot, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews).
- Regularly updated pages with recent stats, dates, and news are more likely to be cited.
- Outdated pages get deprioritised in favour of more recent info.
7. Reputation Beyond Your Site
- Mentions on social media, news, podcasts, and directories feed into LLM training.
- If your brand appears in trusted external content, it increases your chance of being surfaced in AI results.
✅ In short:
If you want ChatGPT (and similar AI tools) to show your site, you need classic SEO + E-E-A-T + structured content + topical authority + freshness + reputation signals.
This is why many businesses are now creating AI-ready content strategies (FAQ hubs, glossary pages, expert blogs, schema markup, and LLM.txt files — a bit like robots.txt but for AI).