3 things to stop believing about your website and AI search 

As if SEO wasn’t confusing enough to the average business owner, now there’s a whole other layer to consider: AI search. 

Some business owners are wondering whether their SEO efforts are now irrelevant, or if they need to completely overhaul their website to appeal to AI more than people. 

We wrote this blog to help bust some of those big AI search myths and give you a primer on how we design for SEO, AI, and humans.

Because it’s true that things have changed. You can’t just “game the system” and stuff a bunch of keywords like the old days of SEO (which are long gone). You also can’t publish a soulless, information-stuffed website that’s built for robots and expect your ideal clients to reach out! 

Between LLMs and traditional search engines like Google, online search has gotten more sophisticated every year. This is good news. It means the businesses that prioritize the human experience PLUS a strong technical foundation will come out on top. 

Defining AI search

You may have heard the terms AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). These are all different tactics, but for the purposes of this blog, we’re going to keep it simple and use “AI search.” 

When we say “AI search,” we mean people going to chatbots like Claude or ChatGPT to ask for answers or business recommendations. For example, if you were to open Claude and ask it to help you find a website designer. 

Myth 1: SEO is irrelevant because of AI search 

If you hear someone say SEO is “dead,” be skeptical. It’s changed, but the foundation is still important. 

Yes, more and more people are heading to chatbots as one of their primary search tools. Still, many users continue to prioritize search engines like Google. The choice will likely continue to evolve and depend on user demographics, search type, industry, and personal preferences.

Beyond that, the reality is that there is no AI search without SEO. They work together. Quality SEO website content gives AI search something to pull from and refer to. Search engine-optimized websites, blogs, and articles provide original content that LLMs can refer to when answering users’ queries. 

For example, if a user heads to ChatGPT and asks something like, “Can you help me find a Baltimore website design studio that works with non-profits?” there’s a good chance Drio will come up. This is because we’ve followed SEO best practices to make sure we’re publishing visible, optimized content.

SEO is not done-for. It was worth focusing on before, and it still is now. 

Myth 2: You should ignore AI search and just focus on traditional SEO

We’ve established that SEO is still important, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore all the AI search changes. If you want to help your business be as visible as possible online, you need to build upon those traditional SEO tactics. 

Just like with Google and other search engines, people conduct different “types” of searches within AI chatbots. For example:

• Sometimes you’re searching for a piece of information. The LLM will generate a response based on content that exists on the internet, which may or may not include a source unless you ask for it. 
• Other times, people conduct searches to find a particular product or service, and even ask the AI to recommend specific businesses or categories of businesses

If you want to get cited in the first search type, you need to create content that does a really good job of answering users’ questions. That requires creating content that: 

• Answers questions directly and concisely up front
• Includes real data, statistics, and cited sources
• Is structured so a bot can extract a clean answer 

If you want to get recommended by name in that second search type, you need those foundational SEO best practices, but you also need to go beyond that to build your brand’s overall authority. 

That involves: 

• Having a brand presence outside your website (e.g. on social media platforms, podcasts, online communities) 
• Getting quality brand mentions with or without your website link (e.g. in the media, guest content, podcasts, videos, review platforms, Reddit)

In short, optimizing your website for AI search goes beyond traditional SEO. The goal is to build a holistic online presence and reputation for your brand. 

Myth 3: You need to choose between a website for AI OR humans

Don’t let anyone tell you that your website must be either-or. It’s a balance between giving bots what they need, while never messing up the experience for the actual people you want to work with.

At Drio, we always start by prioritizing the humans who will visit your site. Then we build in strategic elements that make it easier for bots to crawl your content, helping you show up in search results pages and in AI search. 

Core web vitals are still critical, for example. This means things like user engagement, bounce rate, and click-through rate. The actions taken by the humans who visit your site signal to the bots that your website is a good one to recommend. 

There are many tactics to help strike this balance between pleasing machines and people, but here are a few key ones.

4 ways to balance SEO, AI search, and human appeal

1. Detailed pages that aren’t in your main navigation menu

Part of creating a good user experience is reducing overwhelm and removing unnecessary options. You don’t need to send all your visitors down rabbit holes when they’re just trying to take a quick action. 

On the flip side, detailed landing pages provide good context for both bots and humans searching for more information. 

To achieve both goals, you can create landing pages that dive deeper into a topic or service but aren’t listed in your main navigation menu. You might house them within a secondary menu or just link to them within other pages. 

This allows AI, search engines, and people to collect more context about your business without overloading the average visitor (which can contribute to high bounce rates).

2. Clear navigation

On a similar note, keep your navigation menus easy to, well, navigate. Prioritize clear, concise labels that don’t leave much room for misinterpretation. Be mindful of how many options you’re including in the navigation and always ask: Is it obvious where each tab will lead? 

3. Logical structure

We want to make sure both people and robots can quickly grasp how all the content on your website relates to each other. Which sections are the broadest or highest priority? Which are narrower categories or subsections? Proper heading hierarchy (i.e. H1, H2, H3, etc.), URL formatting, and linking structure all communicate how each part of your website fits together. When you nail this, you make AI, Google, and people happier. 

4. Descriptive ALT & anchor text

Alt text (alternative text) is a hidden description to explain what your images are. It’s there for accessibility (i.e. people who use screen readers) and for when images don’t load properly. But it’s also essential for SEO and AI search. It allows bots to understand what your images are about, giving them the important context they need to recommend your website. 

Anchor text refers to the text you attach a link to, like this one for our custom website design services. See how the text itself describes where the link will take you instead of saying something vague like “click here”? Prioritize this type of clarity whenever you’re adding a button or a link within a paragraph. 

5. Optimize for mobile

In case you didn’t notice…we humans are tethered to our phones. The percentage of mobile traffic will vary by industry, but even if most of your leads reach out while on their desktop, there’s a good chance a group of those users will visit your website from their phones at some point. 

They might be scrolling social media and click through to your website, or they might want to pull up your info while they’re on the go. Whatever the case, you don’t want to risk giving those people a poor experience with a website that’s not optimized for mobile. 

Optimizing your website for mobile signals to search engines and bots that your website will provide a high-quality experience. When that’s in place, they’re more likely to recommend your site in their answers and results. 

The best website satisfies all: Traditional search, AI, and humans 

Ultimately, the way to think about all the AI search changes is that the rules aren’t being replaced. They’re being built upon. This is good news because it means your SEO and human-focused efforts so far can still contribute to your success, but it also gives you something to work towards. Search is becoming more and more sophisticated, and you don’t need to forget about the human element to keep up. Quite the opposite, actually. 
If you need help optimizing your website, we’ve got you covered! Get in touch to learn more about our custom website design services.