How to Create and Write Website Content for AI

With the widespread adoption and integration of AI, how search engines work has changed.

Today, they provide answers (they are fast becoming ‘answer’ engines vs. search engines), where credible and relevant information is collated and delivered directly to a searcher as a summary – rather than a list of links.

Some of those searchers may be satisfied with an easy answer, but others will not be. How do you ensure it’s YOUR credible and relevant information that they pursue, and YOUR site they interact with on a more detailed level…

That’s the challenge – how do you make sure that your website is AI ready, so you can continue to generate high quality website traffic, leading to a flow of enquiries and sales? Even though search engine users no longer need to click on links to find answers and links themselves are presented differently (often with a lower profile).

Making sure that your website works with AI is essential to ensure that your website is AI/Search ready, and puts you in a winning position…

What are LLMs and how do they work…

LLMs (large language models) are advanced AI systems, trained on enormous amounts of text data in order to read and produce human-like text in response to prompts or queries.

Google (Gemini), Bing (Copilot) and other search engines have begun to deploy LLMs to revolutionise the search playbook. Instead of presenting a list of relevant websites in response to a user’s search, AI overviews will present a direct answer instead.

How do search engines do this?

Search engines have always had bots which ‘crawl’ through webpages, systematically scanning the content on each page, and following any links to discover further pages.

This allows search engines to present the most helpful websites to a searcher, based on relevance, trustworthiness and quality.

Now, on top of this, LLMs understand the text of a webpage in more detail, before judging the pages authoritativeness, and present the information from the webpage directly to a searcher in a summarised form.

What does this mean for your website, and more importantly, for your business?

It may seem as though this new technology will decrease your websites effectiveness, allowing searchers to view your content without seeing a listing for or visiting your website and interacting with your online lead or sales generation strategies.

However, according to data from Google, AI systems are allowing them to ‘display a wider and more diverse set of helpful links’, resulting in higher quality ‘clicks’.

This should mean fewer bounces, and more time spent on your site for any given click.

This is due to searchers no longer having to decide if a site is relevant, as a link presented by AI in direct response to a query instils a confidence in the searcher that the website has what they require in answer to their search.

Traditional search is changing, with people expecting direct answers, not further searching. But it is not necessarily changing for the worse.

AI is mainly enhancing searching by transforming it into a more conversational and efficient experience for users, rather than completely replacing searching.

Traditional search engines and AI are expected to coexist in a hybrid mode – at least for the near future.

Therefore, it’s up to you to ensure that your website is ready to handle todays AI enhanced search engines.

How to Optimise your Website for AI searches

It might feel as though the necessary website changes could be a mammoth task and when you see your ‘blue links’ seemingly disappearing from view, the challenge may seem huge.

However, the best advice is indicating that the best practice techniques long used to optimise your website pages for SEO, are still relevant and valid when it comes to optimising your website for AI.

These practices, combined with a few small changes, will serve to place your website in a position to excel in today’s new AI era.

Here’s a summary for creating great website content and copy for AI enhanced search…

1. Create high quality content

Content is still King! This may seem like an obvious point, but creating high quality copy/content is still the key to doing well when it comes to both search engines and visitors. Perhaps not a huge surprise when you consider that searchers value high quality information above all.

Content and copy has long been seen as a poor relation in website development – with design, graphics and display wrongly prioritised. In other words – ‘how it looked’ was often given more weight by website owners and developers, rather than how valuable the website was to searchers and by extension search engines.

This has always been poor practice, but it is even more relevant now. AI does not care about your graphics; it’s your copy and structure it reads and values.

Making your copy informative, focused and uniquely valuable is what allows AI to confidently present it to a searcher.

2. Structure is vital

Your content (copy) needs to be structured in a logical and systematic way to maximise its AI potential.

• Utilise clear sub-headings to break up content, addressing one idea at a time.
• Use bullet points to list instructions and summarise key information
• And use highlighting to emphasise importance.

According to OpenAI’s documentation, AI breaks up text into 150-300 word sections, analysing each independently.

Breaking your text into similar sized chunks, and with shorter paragraphs, will allow AI to easily understand precisely what your web page covers and the value of it to the person initiating the search or query.

3. Write with clarity

AI does not appreciate overly flowery or complicated language (neither do readers for that matter).

Writing in a conversational tone, with less jargon and in a more direct manner, will allow AI to swiftly scan and understand your content.

The value of these practices has been great for your website for a long time now, but a refresh is certainly in order to ensure you website keeps up with the times.

More AI Specific Tips for Your Website

Here are some techniques to maximise the chances that AI recognises and uses your content…

1. Answer searchers questions directly

Be explicit as to the questions you are answering, and the problems you are solving. This convinces AI of your relevance to a searcher, making it more likely they present your information and cite your website in the answers they provide, along with providing a link.

According to a Google (Gemini) search…

To get links in Google’s AI answers (AI Overviews/AI Mode), you need to create ‘authoritative, well-structured content that directly answers user questions, focusing on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and relevance’.

2. Be credible

We’ve addressed how AI favours high quality, clear content. But AI will only ever use your content if it believes your information to be credible and trustworthy.

Ensure any content is well-researched, including valid facts and data to emphasise reliability and trustworthiness.

3. Avoid keyword stuffing

This old SEO ‘trick’ of stuffing key words throughout your content has long been poor practice (it creates a poor user experience for visitors and was penalised by search engines), but keyword stuffing now also negatively impacts the ease with which AI can read your content.

Keywords are necessary, but are better used when thoughtfully placed in headlines and sub-headings, rather than littered multiple times and unnecessarily throughout your copy.

Change is not just on the horizon, it is here.

However, the change is neither bad or good, but presents an excellent opportunity to refresh your website to make the most of a new generation of searchers using AI enhanced search engines.

The results seen from traditional SEO and traditional searches will likely drop, perhaps your site traffic will also drop for a time.

But a properly adapted website will allow you to appear in the AI overviews given by today’s search engines, directing interested and high-value searchers to your site, increasing the quality of your sites clicks, and improving its overall effectiveness.