What is AI-SEO? How to Get Your Business Found by ChatGPT and Perplexity
Traditional SEO gets you on Google. AI-SEO gets you cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and every AI assistant your customers are already using. Here's how it works.
The New Search Landscape
In 2023, most people searched on Google. In 2025, a growing percentage of people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Google's AI Overview instead.
When someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best web design agency in Austin?" — your website either gets cited or it doesn't. Traditional SEO doesn't determine that. AI-SEO does.
What is AI-SEO?
AI-SEO (also called Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO) is the practice of optimizing your website to be cited and recommended by AI language models and AI-powered search engines.
The key difference from traditional SEO:
| Traditional SEO | AI-SEO |
|---|---|
| Optimizes for Google's crawlers | Optimizes for LLM training and retrieval |
| Focuses on keywords and backlinks | Focuses on authority signals and structured data |
| Ranks in a list of 10 blue links | Gets cited in a conversational AI response |
| Measured in rankings | Measured in citations and brand mentions |
How AI Search Engines Decide What to Cite
AI search engines like Perplexity and Google AI Overview use a combination of:
1. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) — they search the web in real time and pull the most relevant, authoritative content
2. Training data — content that appeared frequently in their training data is more likely to be cited
3. Structured data — schema markup helps AI models understand what your business does and where you're located
4. E-E-A-T signals — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness signals that Google (and by extension AI models) use to assess credibility
How to Optimize for AI Search
1. Use structured data (schema markup)
Schema markup tells AI models exactly what your business is, what it does, and where it's located. For a web design agency, this means:
- •`LocalBusiness` schema with your address and service area
- •`Service` schema for each service you offer
- •`FAQPage` schema for your FAQ section
- •`Review` schema for testimonials
2. Write in a question-and-answer format
AI models are trained to answer questions. Content written in a Q&A format — like this article — is more likely to be retrieved and cited when someone asks a related question.
3. Build topical authority
AI models favor sources that cover a topic comprehensively. A single page about web design is less likely to be cited than a site with 20 pages covering web design, SEO, PageSpeed, Core Web Vitals, and related topics.
4. Get cited on authoritative sites
When other authoritative sites link to or mention your business, AI models are more likely to include you in their training data and retrieval results.
5. Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets — the boxed answers at the top of Google results — are a strong signal that your content is authoritative enough to be cited. AI models heavily favor content that already appears in featured snippets.
The Bottom Line
AI-SEO isn't replacing traditional SEO — it's extending it. The fundamentals (fast site, good content, authoritative backlinks) still matter. But the sites that will win in 2025 and beyond are the ones that are also optimized for AI retrieval.
Every site we build includes full AI-SEO optimization: structured data, FAQ schema, topical content strategy, and E-E-A-T signals.