Businesses Must Change Marketing to Show Up in A.I. Searches

During B.O.S.S. Academy’s Phoenix Fridays Leadership Power Hour, the shift to artificial intelligence keeps arising among members. One topic is whether people search the traditional way or use A.I. tools to search. According to experts, about 70 percent of people use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude to search for a company. Therefore, it is imperative for small businesses to be found in those search opportunities.

In traditional, search engine optimization, keywords are important. When using A.I., you want to be the most trusted authority in your industry. Here are some ways to ensure you show up in A.I. tools.

1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile – Update your Google Business Profile regularly. Get reviews from your customers. If you can get them to give you video reviews, that is even better, but if you get reviews, that is good enough. Gemini evaluates local businesses on relevance, behavior and trust.
2. Get Reviews – A.I. tools use review quality, recency, keywords and customer sentiment to decide the businesses are trustworthy. Businesses with consistent positive reviews and active responses perform better in A.I.-powered search results.
3. Structure Content – A.I. tools review your content looking for clear, direct answers they can find immediately. Having frequently asked questions on your site is one way of doing this. Answering questions in your blog is another way you can provide clear answers. For example, How Much Does HVAC Repair Cost? is more likely to be found by A.I. tools unlike blogs about HVAC repair. Like regular search engines, you want to avoid keyword stuffing.
4. Be Consistent – You always want to be consistent whether you want to show up in search engines or not. Being consistent is more important with A.I. tools. Your name, address, phone number and service should be the same on all directories, social media and other marketing you use. Inconsistency signals an unreliable source to search engines. You want to represent your company the same way in all marketing materials.
5. Mention Local Landmarks – You might be found if you mention local landmarks, streets and community events. You also want to earn citations from local directories and organizations.
6. Be Conversational – No one wants to read a textbook. Content written for short-tail Google keywords performs differently than content structured to answer questions in a conversational manner. People actually ask “What is the best CRM for a five-person company?”.
7. E-E-A-T Matters – Content optimized for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness is 96 percent more likely to be found by A.I. tools. Even if you rank first in Google does not guarantee your ranking in A.I. search results. Adding bylines to your blogs can improve your experience, expertise, authoritativeness. The bylines will show you as an expert in the field. You always want to show that you are the best in the industry even if your competitors do the same thing.
8. Publish Regularly – You want to add content, video and written, regularly to your website. If you are not publishing regularly, A.I. tools will rank you lower. The tools will consider your business as one without authority.
9. Add Coding – You might want to have an llms.txt file to your website’s root directory. It is similar to robots.txt, but it is designed for A.I. crawlers. It would tell the A.I. bots what your business does, what pages to prioritize and what you want to be known for.

In general, the companies that are clear, consistent and genuinely helpful are more likely to be found over the ones that are not. Being found is half the battle on getting new clients.