- Original Poster
- #1
I've been working in SEO and web development for around 25 years, and I honestly think we're going through one of the biggest changes in search I've seen during that time.
For years, the conversation was basically:
"How do I get higher on Google?"
Now we're increasingly being asked:
"Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor?"
"How do I appear in Google AI results?"
"Can AI actually understand what my company does?"
"Why am I ranking organically but barely appearing in AI searches?"
This is becoming a big opportunity for UK businesses.
We've been working increasingly on AI SEO / GEO alongside traditional SEO, and our own business is now appearing across AI-driven searches, so we've been able to see first-hand what appears to make a difference.
Some of the most common problems we're finding when looking at business websites are:
• Google can crawl the website, but the site's actual expertise and services aren't particularly clear.
• Service pages are too thin or generic.
• There aren't clear answers to the questions potential customers actually ask.
• Poor internal linking means important pages are isolated.
• Location pages are duplicated or virtually identical.
• Schema and structured data are either missing or implemented badly.
• Businesses aren't building enough authority around individual subjects.
• About pages give AI very little information about the company, its experience or who is behind it.
• Sites look nice but have been built in a way that makes deeper technical optimisation difficult.
• Businesses are still producing content purely around keywords rather than becoming a useful source that search engines and AI systems can understand and potentially cite.
One thing we've changed considerably is how we build websites.
Where appropriate we're building lightweight HTML-based sites that give us much greater control over the code, structure, speed, schema, metadata, internal linking and content than we'd have with some restrictive page builders.
That's not to say everyone needs a new website. Far from it. A good existing WordPress site, for example, can normally be improved significantly.
But I do think businesses need to stop treating "SEO" and "AI optimisation" as completely separate things.
Good technical SEO is still the foundation. Then you build on top of it with strong entities, genuinely expert content, structured information, topical authority and content that directly answers what your customers are asking.
We've helped rank more than 1,200 websites at number one on Google over the years, but what I'm particularly interested in now is where UK businesses are struggling with this next stage of search.
So I'm interested to hear from other business owners:
Have you noticed customers finding you through ChatGPT or other AI tools yet?
Have your traditional Google enquiries changed over the last year or two?
And what's currently your biggest website/SEO problem — rankings, traffic, enquiries, local visibility, AI visibility, or simply not knowing what needs fixing?
Happy to share some thoughts on people's situations if it helps. I'm genuinely interested to see what problems are cropping up across different industries.
Think SEO
For years, the conversation was basically:
"How do I get higher on Google?"
Now we're increasingly being asked:
"Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor?"
"How do I appear in Google AI results?"
"Can AI actually understand what my company does?"
"Why am I ranking organically but barely appearing in AI searches?"
This is becoming a big opportunity for UK businesses.
We've been working increasingly on AI SEO / GEO alongside traditional SEO, and our own business is now appearing across AI-driven searches, so we've been able to see first-hand what appears to make a difference.
Some of the most common problems we're finding when looking at business websites are:
• Google can crawl the website, but the site's actual expertise and services aren't particularly clear.
• Service pages are too thin or generic.
• There aren't clear answers to the questions potential customers actually ask.
• Poor internal linking means important pages are isolated.
• Location pages are duplicated or virtually identical.
• Schema and structured data are either missing or implemented badly.
• Businesses aren't building enough authority around individual subjects.
• About pages give AI very little information about the company, its experience or who is behind it.
• Sites look nice but have been built in a way that makes deeper technical optimisation difficult.
• Businesses are still producing content purely around keywords rather than becoming a useful source that search engines and AI systems can understand and potentially cite.
One thing we've changed considerably is how we build websites.
Where appropriate we're building lightweight HTML-based sites that give us much greater control over the code, structure, speed, schema, metadata, internal linking and content than we'd have with some restrictive page builders.
That's not to say everyone needs a new website. Far from it. A good existing WordPress site, for example, can normally be improved significantly.
But I do think businesses need to stop treating "SEO" and "AI optimisation" as completely separate things.
Good technical SEO is still the foundation. Then you build on top of it with strong entities, genuinely expert content, structured information, topical authority and content that directly answers what your customers are asking.
We've helped rank more than 1,200 websites at number one on Google over the years, but what I'm particularly interested in now is where UK businesses are struggling with this next stage of search.
So I'm interested to hear from other business owners:
Have you noticed customers finding you through ChatGPT or other AI tools yet?
Have your traditional Google enquiries changed over the last year or two?
And what's currently your biggest website/SEO problem — rankings, traffic, enquiries, local visibility, AI visibility, or simply not knowing what needs fixing?
Happy to share some thoughts on people's situations if it helps. I'm genuinely interested to see what problems are cropping up across different industries.
Think SEO
