How to Optimise your Website for AI: Get Found on ChatGPT
A clinic manager in Chapel Hill called me on Tuesday. She opened ChatGPT on her phone, typed “physio for running injuries near me”, and watched it spit out a list of three competing clinics.
Her clinic wasn’t mentioned.
She pays an agency $1,500 a month for SEO. They send her a PDF every four weeks showing her ranking for keywords nobody actually uses.
What’s actually going on here?
People are treating AI like an oracle. They are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews to just hand them the answer. Research shows that roughly 93% of these AI search sessions end without a single website click.
The customer doesn’t want to browse your site. They want the machine to tell them who to call.
Traditional SEO is about getting a blue link on page one. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is about getting your brand into the AI’s actual answer.
They are different games. But you build for them the exact same way. AI models are basically digital researchers. They scan the web, look for the most credible information, and synthesise it. If your website is full of vague paragraphs about being “dedicated to excellence,” the AI skips you. It has nothing to cite.
Here is the infrastructure you need to get cited by the machines.
1. Answer direct questions
AI platforms look for clear answers. Structure your service pages around the actual questions your patients or clients ask. Use the question as a heading. Put the direct answer immediately underneath it. Do not bury the answer in three paragraphs of backstory.
2. Put real numbers on the page
AI algorithms prioritise evidence. Content with actual data gets pulled into AI answers 30 to 40% more often. If a standard consultation costs $180, put that on the page. If your average wait time for an appointment is two days, state it. Specificity builds trust with the machine.
3. Update the machinery
Pages updated in the last 60 days are nearly twice as likely to get cited. AI wants to give users current information. A website built in 2022 and left to rot is a dead signal. Update your service pages, add new job photos, and adjust your pricing quarterly.
We stripped the marketing fluff off that Chapel Hill clinic’s site. We added specific pages for running assessments, listed their actual equipment, and put their consultation fees front and centre.
Now, when someone asks the AI for a running physio out west, it doesn’t just list them. It cites their exact diagnostic process.
Stop paying for PDF reports. Start building infrastructure that makes you the only logical answer.
