How To: Optimise Your Website For AI, ChatGPT, Gemini Et Al

During my years as an SEO Consultant, there has always been questions raised about how to best optimise your site whilst taking in the potential differences in how various search engines choose to rank sites.  Of course it’s always been about ranking well on Google, no one really cared about optimising for Bing, but, it was a valid question none the less.

Once upon a time, all you had to do was spin as much low-quality content as you could, generate as many links as you could, and then watch.  It tended to work.

However, in the pre-Panda and Penguin world, my viewpoint has always you don’t need to do anything different and just follow the fundamentals of a well optimised, technically sound website.

Google always said content was king, and I think that’s always been the case.   As an ex-web developer, I’ve always been a fan of the technical aspects of optimisation and know that once you have you site structure and content nailed, if you then implement high quality site speed, crawl rate and schema optimisation, you will see positive results.

Links help of course, though I’ve never actively engaged in link building of any sort.   My profile is ok; I’ve picked up links from decent sites mainly via writing insightful and useful content.

I’ve always been more focused on getting good reviews on my Google Business profile and using schema to show which reviews are for which services I offer.

And my service pages and blog content rank well for the key terms I optimised them for.  It drives traffic which generates leads for my services, and engagement on my blog content.

I’ve never gave AI a second thought in terms of what I’d need to do to rank.

Then it became apparent that ChatGPT was noticing me.

Case Study:  Getting Leads From ChatGPT

I track all the leads I get to see where the users come from.  A email recently landed in my inbox that told me it came from ChatGPT.   This was a first, so I asked the guy who got in touch if he could share some insights into how that came about.

Fortunately, he was able to send the shared conversation link:

https://chatgpt.com/share/68ee307c-3fc4-800d-8c9b-d5119013b8eb

What I find most interesting about that is that only did it list my current site first, the second recommendation is my old site, which I recently migrated to this site following a rebrand. 

So presumably it’s crawled my old site, saved it as a reference point, then found my new site, and found that to be of the same high standard, but doesn’t process redirects in the same way as search engines.

Anyway, how nice.

Case Study:  Getting Links From ChatGPT

When I was carrying out my recently monthly site performance audit and analysis, I noticed a link being reported in GSC from ChatGPT.

Again, this was from a conversation as follows:

https://chatgpt.com/share/68dce613-58a8-800c-93da-2f1692d6374b

Someone is looking for links to pendant lights and asked what the srsltid parameter is all about:

And ChatGPT found the answer in my blog post here:

Solved: What Is The srsltid URL Parameter?

I think what I find most interesting about all this is that Google is crawling and indexing ChatGPT conversations, and taking note of the links within.

So…

How Do You Optimise Your Site For AI?

For me, the answer is simply good quality on page and technical optimisation.

My Google Analytics page, like all the other service pages on my site has:

• Optimised title tag
  
• Optimised H1 tag
  
• Optimised meta description
  
• Straight to the point content – I’ve no time or inclination to fill my page with “FAQs” like “What is an analytics consultant” and “what does an analytics consultant do”
  
• A visible testimonial
  
• Schema mark up in terms of:
  • Product
  • Reviews
  • Breadcrumbs
    
• High scoring site speed and core web vitals

Regards the blog post, this has the same as above, but I think they key here is that it’s optimised for, and answers the question “What Is The srsltid URL Parameter”.   I don’t know how GPT works, I presume it crawls the web, stores all the content somewhere, and then when someone asks the questions “what is the srslitd URL parameter”, it knows about an article that answers the question and pulls it in from there.

I’ll be honest, I don’ t know how ChatGPT or any AI tool crawls the web and determines which sites to trust and use as citations.  I’m not really bothered either. I’ve always done the following, and it’s worked out well so far:

Be crawlable and technically clean – structured data, site speed, internal linking.

Be trustworthy and consistent – good reviews, credible content, matching information across platforms.

Be direct and useful – answer the question in plain language; never mind the bollocks like FAQ padding

Be human – genuine tone, author visibility, and expertise all matter.

If AI tools can recognise all that, it probably means you’re optimising right.

About The Author

I’m Dave Ashworth — a freelance SEO and website optimisation consultant with a background in development and a focus on fixing what’s broken, improving what’s working, and helping businesses grow through clear, practical SEO.

I combine hands-on technical know-how with years of experience in analytics, content strategy and platform optimisation. Whether it’s an audit, a migration, or ongoing performance support, my work’s about making websites stronger, faster, and easier to understand — for users and for search engines.

When I’m not writing guides or sharing insights, I’m working directly with clients to solve problems, track results, and keep their sites moving in the right direction.