Being Chosen: How to Optimise for AI When There's No Page One

I have been building websites since 1995. Thirty years of watching the internet evolve from static HTML pages to the AI-powered world we are navigating today. And in those three decades, I have seen plenty of "revolutionary" changes that were really just incremental improvements dressed up in marketing speak.

This is not one of those.

What is happening right now with AI and search is different. Not because the technology is impressive (though it is), but because it changes how people find businesses. And I am going to tell you exactly how to adapt, without the speculation and hand-wringing that seems to pass for expert opinion these days.

The End of Page One

Here is the thing that most "SEO experts" have not quite wrapped their heads around yet: when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity, or even Siri on their iPhone a question like "Who is the best web designer in Kettering?", there is no page one. There is no page two. There is no list of ten blue links to scroll through.

There is just... an answer.

One answer. Maybe two if you are lucky. And AI decides who gets mentioned based on something entirely different from traditional ranking factors. It is asking itself:

Can I understand this business? Not "does it have keywords" but "do I actually know what they do, who they serve, and why they matter?"

Can I trust what I am reading? Not "does it have backlinks" but "do the facts here match what I find everywhere else?"

Do I know how to describe them? Not "is the content optimised" but "has this business told me, explicitly, how they want to be represented?"

Traditional SEO is about ranking. AI optimisation is about being chosen.

And that distinction changes everything.

Why Most AI Optimisation Advice is Rubbish

I have been programming AI systems and working with machine learning concepts for over twenty years now. Long before ChatGPT made it fashionable, I was fascinated by how machines learn to understand language and make decisions. That background gives me a perspective that most marketing consultants simply do not have.

So when I see articles telling you to "optimise your content for AI" by stuffing in more keywords or creating "AI-friendly content structures", I wince. These people are applying old thinking to a new paradigm. They are treating AI like a slightly smarter search crawler when it is actually something different entirely.

AI does not crawl your site looking for keyword density. It reads your content trying to understand who you are. It is building a mental model of your business, and if that model is confused, incomplete, or contradictory, you simply do not exist in its world.

"It's basically the same thing, right? It's like this is very visible on top and it's like, 'I hate it.' And then a year later, everyone's like, 'Oh, how do I get in and how do I optimize for it?'"

- John Mueller, Google, on AI Overviews and Featured Snippets

When I first heard Mueller say this, I had one of those moments where everything clicks into place. He is absolutely right about the industry pattern: initial resistance followed by frantic optimisation. But what struck me more deeply was the implication he was not quite spelling out. Featured snippets were a taste of what was coming. AI Overviews are the main course. And the businesses that figured out featured snippets early? They had years of competitive advantage. The same opportunity exists right now with AI visibility, but the window is closing fast.

Give AI an Identity It Cannot Mess Up

Right now, most websites are saying to AI: "Good luck figuring us out. Hope you get it right."

That is a terrible strategy.

Instead, you want to explicitly tell AI exactly who you are, what you do, who you serve, and how you want to be described. Not through clever content. Through structured, machine-readable files that AI systems are specifically designed to read and trust.

This is where AI discovery files come in. These are files that live at your website's root, just like robots.txt does for search engines:

llms.txt: Your core business identity for large language models. Who you are, what you do, in plain language that AI can quote directly.

ai.txt: Permissions and guidance for how AI may use your content. Think of it as robots.txt for the AI era.

brand.txt: How your brand name should be written, your visual identity, your tone of voice. Because "365i Web Design" is not the same as "365I web design" or "three sixty five i".

faq-ai.txt: Verified question and answer pairs that AI can confidently quote. Real facts, not marketing fluff.

identity.json: Structured, canonical data about your business in a format machines love.

When an AI crawler lands on a site with these files in place, it does not have to guess. It reads your story the way you want it told. And that consistency translates directly into accurate, positive representation when someone asks about your industry.

If you are thinking "this sounds like a lot of work for something that might not even catch on", I wrote about exactly that mindset in "It's Not a Standard Yet" Isn't a Strategy. Spoiler: waiting for certainty is a guaranteed way to fall behind. For a full breakdown of all 10 file types, who is using them (Anthropic, Cloudflare, Stripe, Vercel), and what you gain, read How AI Discovery Files Help Your Business Get Recommended.

Write for Questions, Not Keywords

People do not type keywords into ChatGPT. They ask questions. Proper, conversational questions like:

"How much does a WordPress website cost in the UK?"

"Is Elementor actually any good for small businesses?"

"Who is the best web host for WordPress in Britain?"

Your content needs to answer these questions directly. Not dance around them with clever copywriting. Not bury the answer in the fifth paragraph after a lengthy preamble. Just... answer the question.

Short paragraphs. Clear facts. No waffle. No marketing speak that makes AI doubt whether you are a reliable source.

If your page feels like it is really explaining something to a curious human, you are doing it right. If it feels like it is trying to rank for something, you are doing it wrong.

Make Your Brand Unmissable

AI systems are constantly cross-referencing information. They are looking at your website, your social profiles, your Google Business listing, your mentions in the press, your directory listings, customer reviews across different platforms.

And they are checking whether all of these sources agree.

If your business name is "Smith & Sons Plumbing" on your website but "Smith and Sons Plumbing Ltd" on Google and "Smiths Plumbing" on Yell, AI does not know which one is correct. It cannot trust any of them. Confusion equals invisibility.

Your business name, phone number, address, service descriptions, and even your tone of voice need to be identical everywhere. One mismatch creates doubt. Multiple mismatches create invisibility.

This is not new advice for local SEO, but it matters exponentially more for AI. Search engines would still show you in results even with inconsistent information. AI simply will not mention you if it is not certain.

"Zero-click organic search is a branding opportunity. If your boss/team/client is pushing you to get traffic, you should push back with data about just how much you can influence an audience on Google results."

- Rand Fishkin, SparkToro, on The Shifting SEO Landscape

Fishkin has been ahead of the curve on this for years, and I remember reading his early work on zero-click searches and thinking: this man understands where things are heading. What he is really saying, if you read between the lines, is that visibility is becoming more important than clicks. Being present in the conversation matters even when you do not capture the visit. And in the AI era, this insight becomes even more critical. If ChatGPT mentions you positively when answering a question, that builds brand recognition and trust even if the user never visits your site directly. You are being chosen, even in conversations you never see.

Feed AI the Answers It Wants to Reuse

Here is the secret that separates businesses AI loves from businesses AI ignores: give it clean, quotable facts.

Create content that includes:

What you do: In plain, specific language. Not "we provide innovative solutions" but "we design and build WordPress websites for small businesses in Northamptonshire".

Where you serve: Geographic specificity. Towns, counties, regions. AI needs to know your service area to recommend you locally.

Who you help: Your ideal customers. Not "everyone" but specific types of businesses or individuals you serve best.

What makes you different: Your real differentiators. Not marketing fluff but real, verifiable advantages.

What you cost: Even ranges help. AI is often asked about pricing, and if you never mention money, you cannot be recommended when price is part of the question.

How to contact you: Phone, email, address. The basics that AI needs to complete its recommendation.

Write these as facts, not marketing copy. Think Wikipedia, not brochure. AI loves quoting clean, neutral, factual sentences. It is deeply suspicious of hype.

Structure Like You Mean It

Yes, schema markup still matters. Headings still matter. Internal links still matter. Clean URLs still matter.

But more importantly: make sure your About page is crystal clear.

If an AI cannot tell who you are within ten seconds of reading your homepage and about page, you do not exist in its world. That is not an exaggeration. AI systems have limited context windows and attention spans just like humans. If understanding your business requires piecing together information from seven different pages, AI will simply move on to a competitor who makes it easy.

Test If AI Can Actually See You

This is the part most businesses skip, and it is arguably the most important.

Go to ChatGPT. Go to Gemini. Go to Claude. Go to Perplexity. Ask them:

"Who is the best [your service] in [your town]?"

"Can you recommend a [your industry] company in [your area]?"

"What companies offer [your main service] near [your location]?"

If your name does not appear, you are invisible in AI. That is not a traffic problem. That is not a ranking problem. That is an identity problem.

You can use our free AI Visibility Checker to get a full assessment of how AI systems currently see your business. It will show you exactly what they know (or think they know) about you. Just ensure you are using a tool that queries live AI rather than cached data.

The Honest Truth

SEO is not dying. Google is not going anywhere. Traditional search still matters.

But search is no longer the only gatekeeper. Even within Google itself, the rules are shifting. The local pack that businesses relied on for free visibility is now 22% ads, up from just 3%, and AI-powered local results are showing fewer businesses than ever.

AI is now the receptionist. And if it does not know who you are, you never get called into the room.

The businesses that understand this, that invest in their AI identity now while competitors are still debating whether it matters, will have an insurmountable advantage in two years. Maybe less.

I have watched this pattern play out with every major shift in online visibility over the past three decades. The early movers win. The wait-and-see crowd spends years trying to catch up.

Which group do you want to be in?

Frequently Asked Questions