Phew! What is going on in the world of SEO? There’s so much to think about nowadays, whether it is AI Overviews, optimising for ChatGPT search, zero clicks results… it genuinely feels like the rules have changed so much. But I’ll let you into a little secret – the fundamentals haven’t been replaced. In fact, they have simply become more important than ever and success is more within reach for smaller businesses than it ever has been. The aim of this article is to give you four specific tasks that you can take away and implement for your business. Each take under and hour, and move the needle in an ever evolving SEO & AI world.
Why Do Implementing These Tasks Matter?
Simply, AI engines, whether its Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT all pull information from the same structured, trusted and well-organised content that they always have done, they’ve simply ‘raised the bar’ for what good looks like. Note that smaller, agile businesses actually have an advantage here. Typically, your business is owned by one person who is a genuine expert in your topic and can write from real human experience. In addition, you can make quicker changes on your website which can help outperform bloated corporate sites who have been running on autopilot for quite a long time. Now let me be clear, these tasks are not about ‘gaming’ algorithms. It’s about making your expertise shine through in a way that is legible for both humans and machines.
The Four Tasks
Task 1 — Add Schema Markup to Your Key Pages
Schema markup helps search engines and AI tools understand the context of your page a.k.a what it’s actually about. Whilst keywords play a role, its the schema that really provides the background information on the structure of your webpage. If you’re thinking where to start first, I’d suggest looking at FAQSchema if you have FAQs on your website, or LocalBusiness Schema if you’re a business with a physical location. Before doing anything, check to see if the schema is already on the page you want to add the schema, as some content management systems add the schema already. You can do this by checking Google’s Rich Results Tool. If your website doesn’t have schema (let’s take an FAQ page for example), then simply navigate to a tool like Dentsu’s Schema Markup Generator, select the schema you want to create, and add your questions to this. Once the code is created, you copy that code using the little icon of 2 pages and paste into the html of your webpage (this can be done in a number of different ways depending on which platform you are using so I would recommend looking at the documentation of whatever you are using). Once added, save and update/publish that page and check to see that it’s working in the Schema Markup Validator. If so – great! You’ve just added your first schema mark-up and you’re on the way to ranking in AI tools and search engines!
Task 2 — Audit One Content Cluster
One thing that’s very important when it comes to being an expert in your niche is topical authority. To succeed in becoming an authority in your topic, you need to create clusters of tightly related content that signals deep expertise on a subject. This is how small sites can earn a wealth of trust with Google and AI engines. I would suggest that you pick one core topic for your business and list every post that you have on your current site that touches it already. Once you’ve done that, look to spot any gaps – these are opportunities to create content that is relevant to your topic that you do not have on your website already. Once you’ve done this, you want to then make sure that you have a pillar page on your website around that topic. This should naturally link into a service that your business has. If you do have that pillar page already great – if not, get creating! When you have that page, you’ll then want to link into that page from all of the blog content that you have on your website. Adding all these links in signals to Google that not only do you have a commercial oriented landing page (the pillar page), but that you’ve also created a small bookshelf of content that leans into this pillar. This doesn’t have to be an enormous task either. Just three well-linked pieces covering a topic from different angles is classed as a genuine cluster. If you have more – great – but three is a fantastic place to start.
Task 3 — Strengthen Your E-E-A-T Signals
Google’s quality systems and AI engines both look for evidence that real humans with real-life experience made the content on your website. In today’s evolving SEO world, generic, author-less pages are losing ground rapidly. There are tweaks to your website that you can do to help this. For example you can add a ‘last updated’ date to timely post, include original screenshots of your work, or talk about personal experiences and stories that AI simply cannot replicate. Remember that AI tools are ultimately a database of human creation in the first place! Practical tip: Even a one-paragraph “about this post” note explaining why you’re qualified to write it can make a measurable difference, both for humans and for technical crawlers.
Task 4 — Rewrite Your Page Meta Titles for AI Search
Being as clear as possible is incredibly important. AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT often pull meta titles verbatim from all the different sources it scours. Typically vague or clever titles can easily get skipped whereas clear and specific titles will get cited. As a way to improve this, I’d suggest opening your Search Console, sort by impressions and review the top ten titles. Once you have them, create your own format for how to optimise these titles. Something like specific outcome + for whom is a simply way to look at it. Make sure to compare the new title vs the old title so that the transition feels natural and the content of the page clearly answers the title of the article.
Doing It Consistently Is the Whole Game
Ultimately, none of these tasks are complicated – the hard part is just remembering to allocate some time each week to do them and stay consistent! Try not to get distracted by other shiny things or whatever SEO or AI ranking trend is loudest in any particular month. Websites winning the ‘game’ of rankings aren’t necessarily doing far more than every other website – they are simply doing the basics more reliably and over time, those gains compound into real business impact. Remember, a well maintained small site with a human behind it is exactly what search engines and AI tools are increasingly designed to reward.. don’t miss out the opportunity! If you’d like to chat to us further about how we can help your business with your SEO journey – please get in contact!