We all know things move fast in marketing, and that search has changed more in the past two years than it did in the decade before. What hasn’t changed is that visibility is everything! Success starts with content that is fresh, authoritative, well-structured, and semantically clear.
Because of AI, SEO is no longer the only thing to focus on to get your website in front of your audience. Instead of scrolling through blue links, your customers are now asking questions directly to tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, and voice assistants.
AI tools summarise answers, recommend suppliers, and often remove the need to click through to multiple websites.
As a business, creative agency or brand, you need to make sure not to fall behind and optimise your website for AI search sooner rather than later. If your website copy isn’t written in a way AI can clearly understand, trust, and reuse, you risk disappearing from the conversation, even if your SEO performance is strong.
This article explains what AI optimisation means, how it differs from traditional SEO, and how to write website copy that AI systems are more likely to surface, quote, or recommend.
What is AI search optimisation?
You’ll hear several acronyms used interchangeably, and they all describe the same thing.
- AIO – Artificial Intelligence Optimisation
- AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation
- GEO – Generative Engine Optimisation
Instead of optimising pages purely to rank in search results, you’re optimising content to be understood, trusted, and reused by AI systems that generate answers to the questions your ideal client will ask.
AI search tools still match keywords, but they also:
- Interpret intent
- Extract meaning
- Assess credibility
- Combine information from multiple sources
- Generate a single, confident response
This means your copy now needs to function as a source, not just a destination.
How AI optimisation differs from traditional SEO
SEO is still important. It hasn’t disappeared. But it is no longer sufficient on its own. Here’s the key differences:
SEO focuses on:
- Keywords and keyword placement
- Metadata and headings
- Backlinks and authority signals
- Ranking positions
- Driving clicks
AI optimisation focuses on:
- Clear explanations
- Entity understanding (who you are, what you do)
- Context and relationships between ideas
- Structured, quotable answers
- Trust, expertise, and consistency
AI tools are less interested in who ranks first and more interested in who explains something best. That puts quality copywriting front and centre.
AI doesn’t skim like a human. It analyses.
Well-written copy helps AI systems:
- Identify what your business does
- Understand your expertise and positioning
- Extract clean, reusable answers
- Attribute authority to your brand
AI-friendly copy is not templated SEO content. It requires judgment, restraint and clarity, which are skills that come from years of writing for real audiences and algorithms.
Strong AI-ready copy is:
- Specific
- Structured
- Confident
- Human
And yes, persuasive.
Write for questions, not just keywords
People no longer search using short phrases alone.
They ask full questions like:
- “What does a copywriter do?”
- “How much does website copy cost in New Zealand?”
- “Is SEO still relevant in 2026?”
AI tools are built to answer questions, and your website copy should be too.
How to do this well
- Turn your key services into clear Q&A-style explanations
- Use subheadings that mirror real questions
- Answer fully, not defensively
- Avoid burying answers halfway down the page
If a paragraph can stand alone as a complete answer, you’re on the right track.
Be explicit about what you do (and don’t do)
AI struggles with ambiguity. So do decision-makers. If your homepage says things like: “We deliver strategic solutions that elevate brands and unlock growth”, an AI model has no concrete idea what you offer. Neither does a time-poor client.
Instead:
- Name your services plainly
- Explain who they are for
- State the outcomes
- Clarify exclusions
Example:
“Sweet Orange provides senior-level copywriting for established brands, global agencies, and organisations that do good work in the world. We specialise in website copy, long-form content, campaign messaging, and copy for reports. We don’t work with startups or micro-budgets, unless we are excited about the project and people behind it.”
That level of precision helps AI systems categorise your business and helps the right clients self-qualify.
Structure your content so AI can extract it
AI prefers order, and scannable structure helps both humans and machines.
Use:
- Descriptive H2 and H3 subheadings
- Short paragraphs (2–4 lines)
- Bullet points for lists
- Simple sentence construction
Avoid:
- Overlong paragraphs
- Dense blocks of text
- Ideas stacked into a single sentence
Each section should answer one idea and do it well.
Demonstrate real expertise, not surface-level commentary
AI models are trained to recognise patterns associated with authority. Generic content that rehashes what everyone else says is easy to spot, and that means easy to ignore.
Expert-level copy includes:
- Nuanced explanations
- Commercial context
- Practical examples
- Industry language (used accurately and sparingly)
This matters even more for professional services, B2B, and regulated industries, where Sweet Orange does much of its work. You don’t need fluff or jargon. What you do need is depth. If your content sounds like it could apply to any industry, it’s unlikely to perform well in AI search.
Build topical authority through connected content
AI looks for consistency. One strong page helps, but multiple connected pages help far more. A strong blog on your website helps with that.
Topical authority comes from:
- Covering a subject from multiple angles
- Linking related articles together
- Using consistent terminology
- Reinforcing your expertise over time
For example:
- One page on website copywriting
- One article on conversion-focused copy
- One article on AI search optimisation
- One article on SEO vs AI search
Together, these create a clear signal about your expertise.
Write like a human, edit like a machine
AI doesn’t reward robotic writing, but it does reward clarity.
Good practice:
- Write naturally
- Remove filler words
- Cut anything that doesn’t add meaning
- Replace buzzwords with plain English
If a sentence sounds impressive but says nothing, get rid of it.
A note on FAQs and summaries
FAQs are one of the easiest ways to help AI extract direct answers. Effective FAQs:
- Ask real questions
- Give direct responses
- Avoid sales language
- Stay concise
Short summaries at the top or end of a page also help reinforce key points.
The technical foundations for AI optimisation
Copy is the priority, but it needs support. Here are a few technical basics that matter:
- Clean HTML structure with correct heading hierarchy
- Fast load times and mobile optimisation
- Schema markup to define entities like organisations, services, and articles
- Clear internal linking between related pages
- Indexable content (no critical information hidden behind scripts or images)
Get your website AI ready
AI search is already shaping how brands are discovered, compared and shortlisted. The businesses that perform best will not be the loudest or the most keyword heavy. They’ll be the clearest and most credible. Explain what you do. Answer real questions. Write with authority and restraint.
That’s how you optimise your website for AI search, and how you stay visible as search continues to evolve. If you need some assistance to get your copy AI search ready, feel free to reach out. If you like, Martine can also work directly with your web developer to save you time and make sure optimisation is done perfectly.
Let’s get it sorted now. Book a chat.
Also read: Why AI recommendations are the new SEO
~ Again, with thanks to amazing creators from around the world that generously upload their work for free sharing on unsplash.com, canva, pixabay and other royalty-free stock photo platforms.