AI Search Optimisation (AIO) — Getting Found in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
If your business isn’t structured in a way these systems can confidently cite, you can be doing everything right for traditional SEO and still be invisible in that growing share of searches.
We call this AIO — AI Optimisation — and we treat it as an extension of solid SEO, not a replacement for it. The two overlap heavily, but AI systems weigh some things differently to a traditional Google ranking, and getting that difference right is what this page covers.
What actually makes AI systems cite a business
Research into what AI engines pull into their answers is consistent on a few points, and none of them are about keyword-stuffing a page with your business name:
- Specific, verifiable facts outperform vague marketing claims. A sentence with a real number, date, or named detail is far more likely to be extracted and cited than a general statement like “we’re the best in Perth.”
- Third-party validation matters more than your own copy. AI systems draw heavily on reviews, independent write-ups, forum discussion and community sources — not just what a business says about itself. This is genuinely good news for smaller businesses: it means AI visibility is winnable through genuine reputation and reviews, not just by having the biggest marketing budget.
- Clear, structured, question-and-answer content gets extracted more reliably than long, flowing marketing prose, because it’s easier for a system to isolate a direct answer to a direct question.
- Machine-readable signals matter. Structured data (schema markup) and files like llms.txt — which tells AI systems clearly what your business does and where to find authoritative information about it — help these systems build an accurate, confident picture of who you are.
How we approach AIO for a client
Structured, extractable content. We build FAQ sections as genuine direct-answer pairs — a real question, a clear, specific answer — rather than marketing copy dressed up as a question. This helps both AI citation and regular Google featured snippets.
Technical foundations done properly. Schema markup (Organisation, LocalBusiness, FAQPage) implemented accurately and consistently across a site — not just present, but internally consistent, since contradictory structured data actively undermines the trust signal it’s meant to provide. We also implement llms.txt, a newer standard specifically designed to help AI systems understand a site’s structure and authoritative pages at a glance.
Reputation as infrastructure. Because third-party validation carries real weight with AI systems, we treat review generation and response as part of an AIO strategy, not a separate task — specific, detailed reviews genuinely feed both Google’s local answer systems and broader AI citation.
Realistic, ongoing work. AI search is evolving quickly, and any agency promising a fixed, guaranteed outcome here isn’t being straight with you. We treat AIO the same way we treat SEO — an ongoing process of structure, content quality and reputation building, not a one-off fix.
Is AIO relevant to your business yet?
If your customers are the kind of people who’d ask an AI assistant “who’s a good [your service] in Perth” — which is an increasingly normal way to search — then yes. If you’re not sure how much of your traffic already comes this way, that’s a reasonable first question to ask us; we can walk through what’s realistic for your specific industry and market rather than applying a blanket answer.
Get started
If you want your business genuinely positioned for how search is actually changing — not just a buzzword bolted onto your existing SEO — call (08) 9350 9392 or get a quote for a straightforward conversation about what that looks like for your business.