Brittany Hoversten

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Tag: SEO

  • AI Search Optimization: A Practical Guide to Getting Found

    Ask ChatGPT about your organization. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

    If you’re like most of the leaders I talk with, the answer comes back close but not quite right. An old program name. A service you stopped offering. A description that sounds like your website from five years ago, because that’s the last time anyone wrote it down clearly.

    That gap is what AI search optimization is about. People are asking AI tools the questions they used to type into a search bar, and those tools answer by pulling from pages they can find, read and trust. If your best information isn’t on one of those pages, someone else’s version of you gets used instead.

    The good news is that most of the work is the same fundamentals good marketers already know. The bad news is that a lot of organizations skipped those fundamentals the first time around.

    What AI search optimization actually means

    AI search optimization is the practice of making your content easy for AI-powered search tools to find, understand and cite. That includes Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and whatever launches next quarter.

    You’ll see it called GEO, AEO, LLMO and a few other acronyms. I don’t much care what we call it. The job underneath is the same, and it has four parts:

    • Be reachable. The crawlers these tools rely on have to be allowed to read your site.
    • Be clear. Your pages need to state plainly who you are, what you do, where you do it and who it’s for.
    • Be consistent. What your site says should match what your profiles, directories and partners say about you.
    • Be worth citing. Specific, useful answers get pulled into responses. Vague brochure copy doesn’t.

    Notice what’s not on that list: tricks. There’s no secret file and no magic phrasing.

    What the platforms themselves say

    Before you buy a course or a new tool, read the source documentation. It’s short, and it cuts through a lot of noise.

    Google’s guidance on AI features and your website is refreshingly blunt. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. The rest is ordinary SEO, done well.

    OpenAI’s crawler documentation adds one practical step for ChatGPT search: allow OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt. OpenAI says sites that opt out of that crawler won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers. It also keeps the search crawler separate from GPTBot, the one used for training, so you can allow one and block the other.

    That distinction matters for many of the nonprofits and small businesses I work with. Plenty of them blocked “AI bots” as a group at some point, sometimes through a hosting setting nobody remembers turning on. Reasonable instinct. But a blanket block can also take you out of the answers your audience is now reading.

    If you want a refresher on the foundation underneath all of this, start with the SEO basics every marketing leader should own. AI search sits on top of that foundation. It doesn’t replace it.

    Step 1: Make sure the machines can reach you

    This is the unglamorous part, and it’s where I find the most problems. Sit down with whoever manages your website and walk through this list together:

    1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and actually read it. Look for rules that block Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot. Decide on purpose which AI crawlers you allow and which you don’t.
    2. Check your host, CDN and security plugins. Some block bot traffic by default, and a friendly robots.txt can’t override a firewall that turns crawlers away.
    3. Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing’s index feeds Copilot and other tools, so Bing isn’t optional anymore.
    4. Hunt for accidental noindex tags, especially on pages that were staged, redesigned or migrated.
    5. Get important content out of PDFs and images. If your service list lives in a scanned brochure, assume nothing will read it. Put it on a real page in real text.
    6. Fix your internal links. A page nobody links to is hard for anyone, human or crawler, to find.

    None of this is new. That’s the point. A lot of AI search visibility comes down to technical hygiene that got pushed to “someday.”

    Step 2: Write pages that answer real questions

    AI tools answer questions. So the pages that show up in their answers tend to be the pages that answer questions directly.

    I use a simple test. For each important page, can a stranger read the first two sentences and know who this is for, what it is and why it matters? If not, rewrite those two sentences before you touch anything else.

    Structure your pages for answers

    • Use headings that match how people ask. “How much does respite care cost?” beats “Our Approach.”
    • Answer first, then explain. Put the short answer in the first sentence under the heading.
    • Be specific. Name the counties you serve, your hours, who qualifies and what it costs. Specifics are what get quoted.
    • Keep one main topic per page. A page that tries to cover six services usually explains none of them well.
    • Add a short FAQ where it genuinely helps, and make sure any structured data matches what’s visible on the page.

    Say who you are, plainly

    Your About page is doing more work than you think. It should state your full organization name, what you do, where you do it, how long you’ve done it and who leads it. Write it the way you’d want it summarized, because it will be.

    This is also where brand discipline pays off. If one program goes by three different names across your site, don’t be surprised when an AI answer invents a fourth.

    Step 3: Fix the facts about you everywhere else

    AI answers rarely come from your website alone. They draw on directories, review sites, news coverage, partner pages, LinkedIn and business profiles. When those sources disagree, the tools have to guess, and they don’t always guess in your favor.

    So do a consistency pass. Start here:

    • Google Business Profile: name, address, hours, categories, services and description.
    • Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and the major directories in your sector.
    • Your LinkedIn company page and your leaders’ profiles.
    • Partner, funder and chamber sites that describe you. Send them updated copy. Most are glad to get it.
    • Old press releases and event pages that still rank for your name.

    Anyone who has led a rebrand knows this kind of cleanup. It’s tedious. It’s also what makes everything after it work. If you’re curious what that looks like in practice, some of my brand and web work is in my portfolio.

    Step 4: Measure what you can, and be honest about the rest

    Measurement here is imperfect. Say that out loud to your leadership team, then measure what you can:

    • Search Console. Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the standard Performance report under the Web search type. It isn’t broken out on its own, so watch trends on the specific pages you’ve improved.
    • GA4 referrals. Build an exploration or a custom channel group for referral traffic from AI tools, such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com. The volume may be small. The visitors are often further along in their decision.
    • A monthly prompt audit. Keep a list of 10 to 20 questions people actually ask about your organization or category. Run them in two or three tools once a month. Log whether you’re mentioned, whether the facts are right and which sources get cited.

    That last one is low-tech, and it’s the most useful of the three. The cited sources tell you exactly which pages and profiles to fix next.

    One more opinion. Don’t respond to AI search by flooding your site with AI-written filler. Thin pages written to catch every possible question make you less trustworthy, not more. Ten clear, accurate, specific pages will do more for you than a hundred generic ones.

    Key takeaways

    • AI search optimization is mostly SEO fundamentals, done consistently and on purpose.
    • Decide which crawlers you allow. Opting out of OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers.
    • Write pages that answer real questions in the first sentence, with real specifics.
    • Make your facts match everywhere they appear, not only on your own site.
    • Run a monthly prompt audit and fix the sources the tools cite.

    FAQ

    Is AI search optimization different from SEO?

    Mostly, no. Google says there are no extra requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. The difference is emphasis: clear answers, consistent facts across the web and deliberate crawler access matter more than they used to.

    Do I need an llms.txt file or special schema for AI search?

    Not for Google. Its documentation says you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in its AI features. Use structured data where it already fits your content, and keep it matched to what’s visible on the page.

    How do I know if AI tools are mentioning my brand?

    Combine three signals: AI referral traffic in GA4, page-level trends in Search Console and a monthly manual check of the questions your audience actually asks. The manual check also shows which sources get cited, which tells you what to fix first.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want to know how your brand shows up in AI answers?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.

  • SEO Basics for Marketing Leaders: What You Should Own Yourself

    Here’s a meeting I’ve been in more than once. Traffic is down, someone asks why, and the room turns to the one person who “does the SEO.” That person might be a junior coordinator, a freelancer or an agency on a retainer nobody has reviewed in two years. The leader in the room can’t tell whether the answer they get is right. That’s the problem these SEO basics for marketing leaders are meant to fix.

    You don’t need to become a technical SEO specialist. You do need to understand enough to set direction, ask good questions and know when something is off. Search is often one of the biggest sources of people finding your organization for the first time. That’s too important to treat as a black box.

    I come at this from both sides. I have a background in web design and development, I use Google Search Console and Google Analytics regularly, and I’ve led website work, including at Tri-CAP, where I finished a rebrand already underway and grew engagement across social, newsletters and the website. The lesson from all of it: SEO is mostly strategy and discipline. The technical part matters, but it’s rarely where things fall apart.

    What SEO actually is, in plain terms

    Search engine optimization is the work of making your site easy to find, easy to understand and worth showing for the searches your audience actually makes.

    That breaks into three jobs:

    • Be findable. Search engines can crawl your site, read your pages and include them in results.
    • Be understandable. Each page is clearly about something specific, with titles, headings and content that match.
    • Be worth it. Your content answers the searcher’s real question better than the alternatives.

    Notice that only the first one is mostly technical. The other two are content strategy, brand clarity and knowing your audience. That’s leadership territory.

    SEO basics for marketing leaders: the five things to own

    You can delegate execution. You shouldn’t delegate these.

    1. The list of searches that matter

    Every organization should have a short, written list of the topics and phrases it wants to be found for. Not 400 keywords from a tool export. More like 15 to 30 real phrases, grouped by audience and tied to goals. “Food shelf near me” and “volunteer opportunities in St. Cloud” are different audiences with different intent. Your list should say so.

    2. One page, one purpose

    Every important page should have a clear job and a clear topic. When three pages compete for the same idea, they tend to weaken each other. When one page tries to cover six programs, it’s hard for anyone to know what it’s for. Owning your site structure is a leadership decision because it reflects how you want people to understand your organization.

    3. Titles and descriptions that sound like you

    The page title and meta description are often the first impression someone gets of your brand in search results. They should be accurate, specific and written by someone who knows your voice. Review the titles on your top 20 pages. If they read like “Home | Untitled,” you’ve found a quick win.

    4. A content plan tied to questions

    People search in questions. Your content should answer them. A simple way to start: ask your front desk, customer service team or program staff what people ask most often, then make sure your site answers each one clearly. That list will be more useful than most keyword tools. Feed it into your editorial plan. I share how in my post on how to build a content calendar.

    5. Protecting search value during big changes

    Rebrands, redesigns and platform moves are a common way organizations lose search visibility, often because old URLs disappear without redirects. If you lead a website change, make redirect planning a requirement, not an afterthought. I go deeper on this in how to rebrand an organization without losing your audience.

    Questions to ask your team or agency

    You don’t need to know every answer. You need to know what to ask. Keep these handy:

    1. Which searches are we trying to win, and how are we doing on each one?
    2. What are our top landing pages from search, and did any drop recently?
    3. Are there errors in Search Console we should know about?
    4. Which pages are we improving this quarter, and why those?
    5. How will we know if the work is paying off?
    6. What would you stop doing if your hours were cut in half?

    That last question tells you a lot. A good partner can name their highest-value work quickly. If the answer is vague, the plan probably is too.

    The one-hour monthly SEO check

    Here’s a routine any marketing leader can run, even without a dedicated SEO person. Block an hour on your calendar every month.

    • Search Console, performance report. Compare clicks and impressions to the prior period. Note any big drops by page.
    • Search Console, indexing. Check for new errors or pages that aren’t being indexed.
    • Top queries. Look at what people actually searched to find you. You’ll often spot topics you never planned for.
    • Top landing pages in Google Analytics. Are visitors from search doing what you hoped, like signing up, donating, or contacting you?
    • Spot-check three pages. Read the title, description and first paragraph as if you were a stranger. Does it answer the question?
    • Write down one action. One page to improve, one redirect to fix or one question to answer next month.

    One hour, one action. Over a year, that’s twelve real improvements and a leader who actually understands the channel.

    What not to worry about (yet)

    There’s a lot of SEO noise. If you’re getting the basics right, you can usually let these go for now:

    • Chasing every algorithm update headline.
    • Obsessing over exact keyword density.
    • Buying links or “SEO packages” that promise rankings. Be wary of anyone who guarantees a position.
    • Publishing a high volume of thin posts just to have more pages.

    The fundamentals hold up. Google’s own SEO Starter Guide is a good, plain-language reference, and it’s free. If someone’s advice contradicts it, ask them to explain why.

    A quick word on AI search

    AI-generated answers are changing how some people search. The basics still apply: clear pages, real answers, accurate information and a site that’s easy to understand. Strong SEO fundamentals are the best preparation for whatever search looks like next.

    Key takeaways

    • SEO is mostly strategy and discipline, which makes it a leadership responsibility.
    • Own the short list of searches that matter, your site structure and your titles.
    • Answer the real questions your audience asks, in plain language.
    • Protect your search value during rebrands and redesigns with redirect planning.
    • Run a one-hour monthly check and commit to one action each time.

    FAQ

    What SEO basics should every marketing leader know?

    Marketing leaders should understand which searches matter to their audience, how their site is structured, how page titles and descriptions work, how to read Search Console and how to protect search value during website changes. Execution can be delegated, but direction shouldn’t be.

    How long does SEO take to show results?

    SEO usually takes months, not weeks. Fixes like better titles or repaired redirects can show up faster, while new content often needs more time to build visibility. Track progress monthly and judge results over a quarter or longer.

    Do small organizations need to hire an SEO agency?

    Not always. Many small teams can cover the basics with a clear keyword list, a monthly Search Console check and a habit of answering common questions on their site. An agency or specialist makes sense for technical problems, large sites or competitive markets.

    For more practical marketing guides like this one, browse the Insights blog.

    / Work with Brittany

    Want a website that gets found by the people you’re trying to reach?

    Hiring a marketing leader or need a hands-on partner for a project? See how we can work together or send me a note.