ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews don't crawl and rank your site the same way classic search did, but they still have to read it, understand it, and decide whether to trust it. Here are five concrete changes that make that easier, in the order we usually tackle them.
1. Write the answer before the pitch
AI models extract direct answers far more reliably than they extract sales copy. If a page is meant to answer "what does GEO cost" or "how long does SEO take," say so plainly near the top, in a sentence that could be lifted and quoted on its own. Then build the persuasive case underneath it.
2. Add structured data, properly
Schema markup (Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article) doesn't just help classic search engines: it gives AI systems an explicit, machine-readable summary of what a page is about, which reduces the chance they misread or ignore it.
3. Use real headings, not just bold text
A page built from properly nested H1/H2/H3 tags is far easier for an AI system to segment and quote from a specific section than a wall of text with visually bolded "headings" that carry no semantic markup at all.
4. Make sure AI crawlers can actually reach the page
It sounds basic, but it's the single most common issue we find: robots.txt rules, JavaScript-only rendering, or aggressive bot-blocking that quietly prevents AI crawlers from ever seeing a page, so it's not a ranking problem, it's a visibility-zero problem.
5. Earn mentions on sources AI models already cite
AI engines lean heavily on sources they already consider reliable. A mention or link from an established, relevant publication does more for AI citation than the same effort spent on lower-authority sites: the same logic as classic link building, just applied with a different end goal.
Where to start
You don't need to rebuild your whole site. Start with the two or three pages that matter most commercially, fix those five things on them, and monitor whether AI engines start referencing them. That's the audit we run first with every new GEO client.