Written by: Ryan Walsh
Date: 14.01.2026
Read time: 8 minutes

Table of contents:

• What exactly is AI content optimisation?
• A step-by-step guide on how to better optimise your business’s content marketing so that it becomes more likely to appear in the AI results
• How to implement AI optimisation

It used to be the case that businesses had a laser focus on where the company ranked in Google’s organic results. This was often there sole focus, perhaps with Adwords campaign to supplement their organic rankings.

Now, this is still important; however, businesses are becoming increasingly aware that to stay ahead of the competition, they need to focus on

AI optimisation as well. The buzz words at the moment are GEO, AI and LLMS- its these words that are widely being discussed by marketing agencies globally.

Businesses are therefore contacting us every week to find out how they can improve their visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI

Overviews. After all, as this LLM’s grow in popularity if businesses don’t adapt, well they will be left behind in the dust!

Why are businesses becoming more focused on improving their AI SEO?

Well, the numbers do the talking themselves; let us explain:

Google’s AI Overview now has reached over 2 billion monthly users.

The AI giant ChatGPT now serves over 800 million users every week!

Perplexity is now processing over 780 million different queries in a single month!

So, whether someone is looking for information on a “copper claw-footed bath” or a local “employment lawyer”- often they ask the LLM’s such as ChatGPT for advice. More and more people are using AI to find local services and products; therefore, businesses cannot afford to ignore AI optimisation and this is why they are coming to us.

Tell me more about AI content optimisation and why its so important

Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO for short, often relies on LLM models to produce an answer. What this basically means is that the

AI has read practically everything there is to read on the internet, and has knowledge of everything from the Premier League to providing advice on how to manage a difficult employee! Therefore, GEO produces AI-generated answers based on its training data.

This training data is then calculated in terms of its strength, in terms of which businesses or brands are more important than others. A bit like how Google’s algorithm crawls and indexes then assigns a weighting to how strong or weak the businesses ranking factors are. Well the

LLM’s work differently, yet they still have to work out what’s a quality answer and what is not.

AI Systems cite citations.

AI systems, such as ChatGPT, can cite sources. So, rather than obtaining do-follow backlinks, businesses are now competing for visibility in

AI systems, which means gaining citations and therefore a customers clicks.
Citations for those who do not know are simply references to the source, and shoppers often click the citation for more information.

Therefore, if your business is cited in a Google AI Overview, well, this means that you can then be top of the fold, and could be mentioned as the citation on Google. This can then result in possibly millions of clicks to your business, and possibly zero clicks to the rest of the organic results!

So, let’s get down to brass tacks: how can businesses better optimise their content for AI search?

Well, the answer lies not in really sophisticated, cutting-edge search engine optimisation methods that you might think!

No, instead it boils down to best practices, SEO best practices that have been around for donkey years. That is clear, well-written content marketing with clear headings.

 

Therefore its important to get these aspects nailed:

• Good keyword research
• Good page structure
• Good use of H1-H6 tags, known as header tags
• Get good at writing using a more conversational tone
• Use FAQ style of answering questions
• Make sure the work can get indexed!
• Let’s define that a bit more here:
• Good page structure

Before you go typing up a giant 3,000-word article, instead think about the structure of the content marketing. Think in advance how you can use clear headings, such as H1-H6 tags, to correctly address the main issues or areas that need to be discussed to answer the article correctly.

Google’s organic algorithm plus the LLMs don’t like massive blocks of text! Instead split things up, use better page structure, remember that the LLMS, Google and Bing have limited crawl budgets, so answer the most important points higher up the article.

To do this, you need a good page structure; that’s not just best practice for the actual reader.

Having good on-page SEO and page structure means that search engines, LLMS, and AI can better understand the questions the page answers. Now, if you answer a particular question clearly in the page structure, this can help your work stand out from the crowd.

Therefore, a good page structure is essential.

 

Get to the point

Do you hate it when people waffle?

You will find that, in search engine optimisation in particular, there will be a lot of people who waffle because, quite simply put, they don’t know what they are talking about!

A lot of agency owners and copywriters will say a lot, but sometimes don’t really know a lot in regards to what they are talking about.

Leading to content thin work!

Constantly waffling is a sign you don’t know your craft- that’s important whether your selling SEO services or a new hyper car.

So, getting to the point is essential; it’s also necessary to stand out in AI search engines.

The reason is that if you manage to add a lot of relevant detail. A lot of facts, it’s clear you know what you are talking about, then your business will stand out.

Google EEAT score will be higher

The search engines will know what topics you are writing about
Using a conversational yet to-the-point writing style is what the LLMS likes.

 

Front-load the information

Some SEO agencies believe that, in traditional SEO, it’s the opening line and H1 tag that are used to gain an understanding of the page’s purpose. Now, put yourself in an LLM’s shoes; all businesses websites only have a set crawl budget allocated to them. There is no unlimited crawl budget, so just as in a sales pitch to a prospective customer, you want to capture their interest and sustain it throughout. You have to give them something they want to hear right at the start.

So, our best advice at this SEO company is again not to waffle, especially in the opening paragraphs, and to instead get across the main points quickly.

Sometimes, copywriters bring together all their thoughts right at the end of the article, that’s in the conclusion. However, with crawl budgets and people’s attention spans being limited, it’s better to get to the point. Plus, also split your answer up into manageable chunks of information.

 

Be human, don’t be robotic.

So, if you write in a conversational tone, naturally, you dispense better advice, this then means when you get this right you will be improving the Google EEAT score.

Let us give you an example: write as if you’re talking to a person directly in front of you. Offer the best advice you can, and make sure that the person writing that work is an expert on that particular product or service.

 

Add as much authoritative data and statistics as possible

The very best SEO experts in the entire world know that Google’s original algorithm was based on Google’s PageRank. Now, this worked similarly to how you would write a university dissertation. If you cited your sources, (Harvard Referencing System)- do the same for your websites content marketing by mentioning and adding outbound links, it will tell Google that the article has been researched.
Well, fast forward to 2026, and things are similar: if you cite well-respected sources, such as statistics you have read, this work seems to be more trusted by the LLMS. It can therefore go some way toward improving your business’s AI visibility.

 

Do add schema markup

Make sure that you add schema markup to your work. By adding schema markup, you can help inform LLMS and Google with an obvious message about what that product or service page is about. For example, why not use Schema to mark up the product reviews? This greatly enhances the overall page’s chances of appearing as a featured snippet, and it also helps LLMS, such as ChatGPT, gain a much better understanding of what that page is actually about.

Think about Google EEAT

In any company, there will often be experts who specialise in knowing about a particular service or product that you retail.

Now, if these people don’t work with the SEO team in 2026, then you’re simply missing out on a massive opportunity, because injecting or incorporating their knowledge into the article can significantly improve the page’s Google EEAT score.

By significantly improving the Google EEAT score by having experts add their opinions to the article, you can improve your Google organic ranking as well. Now, by doing this, you’re already starting to improve your business’s AI visibility as well. The work is, for example, much more likely to be mentioned by Google AI Overviews if the work is already ranking highly organically in the first place and have proved to the algorithm that the content marketings dwell time is superior to other pieces of work that aim to answer that question.

It will also be more likely to be trusted by the LLMs if the work ranks high organically.

Here are some other best practices to improve your AI SEO

 

Add an author box at the bottom

By adding an author box at the bottom of an article and linking to the author’s LinkedIn profile, you can improve the Google EEAT score. The reason is that you will be showing that you are an expert in what you are writing about.

 

Quote external sources

Don’t add too many outbound links, but most definitely cite sources that have shaped your thinking and helped to write that article. If there was, for example, a particular statistic that you found useful, then of course mention it, but also provide an outbound backlink as well.

 

Keep the information up to date.

Now, what unites Google’s organic algorithm and the LLMs is that people need up-to-date information to base purchase decisions on. For example, if you want to purchase a new electric car in 2026, you don’t want to be reading an article published in 2020.
Therefore, make sure the business’s content marketing stays up to date.

 

FAQ style content marketing

Our best advice for your work being mentioned by the LLMS in 2026 is to use an FAQ-style writing approach. This has served our agency extremely well, and it just stands to reason that if you answer a particular question, that question and answer are more likely to be picked up by LLMS if it’s written in an FAQ style. This is a style of writing that our copywriters and our content marketing team have used for a very long time to generate more organic traffic and visitor numbers.

 

Come to the best

We are one of the most established SEO agencies in South Wales. Headed by Ryan Walsh, there is no one with superior SEO knowledge in Wales.