Hey there and welcome back to AI on the Fly. I am Ryan Kelly, your host, and today I’m going to be answering the question: what are the core characterizations of an AI optimized website?
And the reason somebody would ask me that is ’cause they want to be found on answer engines, artificial intelligence, and search engines and the like.
So today I’m going to be giving you 6 tips on how to foundationally optimize and get your website ready for answer engines and for artificial intelligence, which will, as a byproduct, help your conversions and help people love your website.
#1 Clarity over cleverness
Gone are the days where he or she that is the most clever wins. Cleverness confuses users. It confuses people from conversion. It distracts them from the main purpose they’re on the website, and it gets them to think too hard about things that aren’t related to answering their question or whether they’re going to hire you, buy from you, or call you.
Here’s the deal with clarity over cleverness. You need to be super clear on what you do, how you do it, who you serve, where you serve them, how you operate, the culture of your company, your unique selling propositions. Clarity has never been more important than now. Your homepage shouldn’t be cute, it should be clear. Don’t make humans or AI think when they get to your website. Make it easy for them to decide to engage with you.
#2 Really good structured, scannable content
This means that you need super clear headings, like H1, H2, and H3 tags. If you don’t know what that is, go to your favorite artificial intelligence and ask it. It’ll tell you. But you need clear headings — H1, H2, and H3. You need short paragraphs. You need direct answers to direct questions. You need lots of bullet points. You need to have, on long web pages, TL;DRs — too long, don’t read summaries — and then all of the information below. It’s critical that you make your structured content really scannable and easy.
#3 Pages built around real questions
If you don’t know what people are really asking about your product, your service, or your industry, go to AI and ask. Go to Google and ask: hey, what are the top five questions being asked right now around this thing, this topic, this subject, this product, whatever it might be? And you need to make sure that you’re answering those questions directly in the content of your website — and that might mean that you don’t go and adapt all your content on a page, but rather you add a frequently asked questions section to each page where you find those top three, five, or ten questions people are asking and you answer them clearly.
Service pages need to answer specific problems and solve specific situations. Content that mirrors people’s questions with your answers will get you found. People don’t search keywords anymore, they ask questions.
#4 Strong entity signals
Who are you? You need to have consistency in your name, your address, and your phone number throughout your website, your directory listings, your social media. You need to be clear about your name, your phone number, and your address. You need clear service descriptions and messaging that matches on every page.
You need to have an About page with real people and real descriptions of who they are and what they do in your company. You need to have real photography, because AI and Google can now see your images and know what’s a stock image and what’s not. If you want the authority, the uniqueness, and the attributed experience showing that you do what you say you can do, there should be pictures of you doing it. So have real pictures. AI needs to clearly understand your business, because confusion will kill visibility.
#5 Proof of trust
You need it as often as possible. That means reviews, testimonials, case studies — things on every page. Do you have a review or a testimonial on every service page from somebody saying that you’ve killed it with that service, and is it real? Does it say something like, “I highly recommend WSI, they did a great job,” or does it say, “Ryan Kelly and his team really got me to come up on answer engines and search engines. They got me found in places I only dreamt of. It increased my business. I would highly recommend them.”
You want reviews where it’s an actual review about your product or service coming from a real person. Maybe you have a case study on certain pages of your website proving that you can do what you say you can do. Think about that. What about certifications and licenses and things that make you stand apart from your competitors? You need proof of trust throughout your website. Don’t just say you’re good, prove it.
#6 Fresh, relevant content
Have great blog content where you’re answering people’s real questions and being innovative and relevant to what’s being talked about today. Have good updates on your website about what’s happening with your industry or your business, and create new pages over time — because every industry, for the most part, changes. And you need to showcase that you can change and be flexible within your industry and with time, because a static website gets stale. And if your site doesn’t evolve, you will slowly disappear.
So there you go, guys. There’s 6 tips on how to foundationally optimize your website for AI. If you like the video, please click like, subscribe, if you like these little short 5 to 6 minute segments of AI and marketing and innovation.
Until next time, I’m Ryan Kelly, your host of AI on the Fly. Buckle up.