AI SEO Mastery: Part 1 – How Search Has Changed

TLDR: Search engines don’t just show links anymore. AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews now give people full answers written by machines. If your content isn’t showing up in those answers, it’s being ignored. This post explains what AI SEO is, how it's different from old SEO, and what your team needs to start doing now to stay visible.

Why this matters

Until recently, SEO was about making your website rank on Google. You’d choose keywords, tweak pages, get backlinks, and track your position on the results page.

That system still exists. But it’s no longer the whole story.

Now, when people ask questions online, AI tools answer them directly. These answers are stitched together from many sources. The AI might pull a sentence from your site, mix it with someone else’s data, and show it without linking back to you. Or worse, it won’t include you at all because your content isn’t structured for AI to find or relevance, or trust.

Google calls this new system AI Overviews. Microsoft calls it Copilot. ChatGPT and Perplexity do it too.

So your content strategy now needs to work for two readers:

1. Humans, who skim, scroll, and search
   
2. AI systems, who extract, embed, and rewrite
   

Here’s the shift from old SEO to AI SEO:

• Old SEO: Choose a keyword
  
• AI SEO: Understand search intent
  
• Old SEO: Optimise a single page
  
• AI SEO: Optimise a whole topic cluster
  
• Old SEO: Wait for rankings to change
  
• AI SEO: Aim to be included in AI-generated answers
  
• Old SEO: Focus on click-through rates
  
• AI SEO: Focus on citations, mentions, and presence in AI tools
  
• Old SEO: Publish static content
• AI SEO: Maintain content that is updatable, structured, and explainable

If your content isn’t visible to AI tools, you’re invisible to the next wave of search.

How AI search actually works

AI search systems don’t crawl and rank in the same way old search engines did. Here's what happens instead, in plain terms:

1. They find your content
   AI crawlers (like GPTBot or Google-Extended) scan your site. If your robots.txt blocks them, or your content is hard to read, they skip you.
   
2. They turn it into math
   Your words are converted into embeddings—a type of structured data that represents meaning. The AI uses these embeddings to “remember” your ideas.
   
3. They store it in vectors
   This is like saving your content in a searchable map. When someone asks a question, the AI doesn’t search by keywords. It searches by meaning.
   
4. They generate answers
   Using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), the AI pulls the most relevant content from its vector map and writes a response—sometimes quoting you, sometimes not.
   

If your content isn’t well-structured, the system won’t include you.
If you don’t use schema, the system may mislabel your content.
If you don’t update regularly, the system may assume you’re outdated.

This is why traditional SEO tactics alone aren’t enough anymore.

What should I do differently now?

To get found in AI-powered search, your team needs to shift from page-level optimisation to AI-readable strategy.

Here’s where to begin:

1. Reorganise your content by topic, not keywords
Create “pillar” pages for your key topics. Link them to supporting pages that go deeper. AI systems favour well-structured topic clusters over scattered blog posts.

2. Use plain language and structured formatting
AI prefers clear writing, short sentences, and obvious headings. Use H1, H2, H3. Break things into bullet points when it helps. Avoid jargon.

3. Add schema markup
This is behind-the-scenes code that helps AI understand what each part of your page means. Use FAQ schema, article schema, and organisation schema as a start.

4. Answer real questions directly
Think like your customer. Write sections that clearly answer common questions. Use question-and-answer formats. These are more likely to be pulled into AI-generated results.

5. Get included in AI crawlers
Check your site’s robots.txt file. Don’t block bots like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or Google-Extended unless you have a good reason. If you want to opt out, do it deliberately.

Here's Real example: Why a services firm saw traffic disappear

One professional services firm published regular updates on legal policy. Their content ranked well in Google… until 2025.

Their traffic fell off a cliff.

Why? Their content wasn’t appearing in AI Overviews or Copilot answers. It wasn’t linked. It wasn’t cited. It was completely skipped.

We helped them:

• Add entity tags to their author pages
  
• Organise their posts into structured guides
  
• Update technical settings for AI accessibility
  
• Rewrite their top 10 pages with better structure, schema, and context
  
• Result? Within 90 days, they were being cited by AI tools again
• Saw a 3x increase in inbound traffic.
  
• No new content. 

What’s next in this series?

This is Part 1 of a six-part series on AI SEO.

Part 2: How to Build a Working AI SEO System
Part 3: What real results look like—traffic, rankings, visibility
Part 4: Where search is headed—LLMs, AEO, and AI visibility metrics
Part 5: The no-code tools and platforms to make this easier
Part 6: How to report results monthly and retain clients long-term

You can bookmark this series or follow along each day as we build your full AI SEO stack step by step.

FAQ

Q: Is AI SEO only for big businesses?
A: No. SMEs, public sector teams, and solo operators all need to be visible in AI-powered search. Many tools are no-code and low-cost.

Q: Can’t I just keep doing normal SEO?
A: You can—but you’ll miss traffic from AI tools like Copilot, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. These platforms bypass traditional search rankings.

Q: How do I know if I’m being cited by AI?
A: Tools now exist to track AI visibility. You can also test your content manually by prompting tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity and seeing if you appear.

Q: Is this just another SEO fad?
A: No. Google’s leaked roadmap, Microsoft’s Copilot push, and declining click-through rates confirm the shift is permanent. Generative search is here.

Want a full strategy built for AI search?

Start with our Enterprise AI Strategy Roadmap. We’ll map the technical, content, and performance foundations your site needs to compete in an AI-first world.

Next up:
Part 2 – AI SEO Mastery : How to Build a Working AI SEO System.